Some photos just don’t get their due when they first appear on 500px; of course, that’s what ISO is for. For digging up gems so that amazing photography gets the credit it deserves! And this photo by Francesco Pandolfo most certainly deserves some serious credit.
What you see below is a man walking along the rim of the world’s largest lava lake, found at the top of the stratovolcano Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo… and it is one of the few photos in existence that properly represents the scale of this incredible piece of nature:
We cannot stop staring at this photograph. Every time we look away, we look back. This is why you should include people into your landscape photographs… because the power of this image comes entirely from realizing how small and insignificant a human is when walking along a lava lake that, at its deepest, measured in at 600m (~1,970 ft) deep!
The lake depth fluctuates by hundreds of meters between eruptions, and eruptions at this volcano are frequent and dangerous, but whether or not it is, right this second, the largest lava lake in the world is a moot point.
It is a fiery representation of the power of mother nature the likes of which most of us will never see… much less walk alongside. Here are a few more photos captured by 500px photographers who have traveled to Nyiragongo.
You can find more of Francesco’s work by following him on 500px or visiting his website. And if you’d like to see all the photos of Mount Nyiragongo on 500px, click here.
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