My good friend, Christian Storms told me about a job he had down in Kagoshima. He’s doing a corporate about some research on volcanoes and ash. The research is related to the volcano eruption in Iceland that grounded airplanes in Europe back in 2010. He invited me to do some drone shots for the project, and of course I took it.
The rest of the team was off at the other side of the island. I was basically the Second Unit, all by myself, trying to get a good line of sight to the crater on my drone. I was pretty happy with what I got, and I’ll share the video from the drone when I can. But until then, I will share this video I took from my iPhone.
I was walking back from the base of the mountain. It was the end of the day. We had to walk up a couple of kilometers back and forth a couple of times. I was pretty tired, my head down. The shadows were getting longer. And then I hear a rumbling from behind me. It was like Sauron’s eye had turned toward me and darkened the sky. I turned around and saw boulders flown from the mouth of the crater. The volcanology term for any rock bigger than 6mm is bombs, larger than 2mm is lapili, and smaller than that is ash (see, I did learn something from the trip).
I pulled out my phone as quickly as I could and caught the rest of the eruption. I got the ash cloud with the sun in the background. Watch how the beams of light shoot around the cloud. Check it out below:
B.S. Donovan 