460 - Volcán Santiaguito
Truth be told, in the past couple weeks I completely forgot I’d broken my toe. Besides the occasional tingle in the cold, I thought it’d fixed itself. Yeah, no.
Today’s adventure started in the Guatemalan town of Quetzaltenango. If you’re wondering why these cities' names are so complex, it’s because they’re all in Mayan. If you add “tenango” to a word, it means “place of walls''. Hence the city name.
The draw about Quetzaltenango in particular is this MASSIVE volcano on its outskirts, called Santa María. And fun fact- the volcano erupted in 1929 and killed over 5,000 people from lava flows. It’s got quite the reputation. The reason we were there, however, was to see it’s side cone, which is named Santiaguito.
Santiaguito is still active, and continuously smokes and erupts ash every couple hours. AKA, I needed a pic. Badly. We settled on a 5.3 mile round trip hike, with a little over 1,000 feet of elevation gain. AllTrails came in clutch for this one, and the trail was clearly lined up. No need for a guide.
We found a nice little lot near the trailhead, where we paid $7 USD to the owner of the land to sleep there overnight. It was a gated property, and felt relatively safe, so we were comfortable leaving our van there for the hike. Our goal was to wake up first thing in the morning and arrive at the overlook by sunset.
And that we did. But it was bitter cold out- I keep forgetting that we’re in the mountains of Guatemala and that it actually gets cold here. You’d think all of Central America would be blazing hot because of the equator. The good thing was that the first mile or so was where all the elevation gain was, so we warmed up super quick from the exercise.
Before long, we were about .3 miles from the overlook, when I realized the sun was starting to rise. Shit- I was starting to realize I shouldn’t have slept in that extra five minutes. Literally every minute counts with landscape photography, so I’d always air on the side of having a cushion of time of arrival before the sun rises/sets. I obviously didn’t do that today.
I started running. What I really wanted was the sunrise’s golden light to hit the steaming volcano from the side, but that would only happen for a few minutes. I needed to be there RIGHT NOW.
And I think this is where I fucked up. Running across all those roots and rocks did something to my foot. My toe had been hurting a bit on the way up, and since I was putting my weight on the left side of my foot to avoid stepping on my middle (broken) toe, I think I hit some kind of nerve.
As I’m writing this a couple days later, it hurts to walk on the left side of my foot AND on my middle (broken) toe. AKA it hurts to walk in general.
But in the heat of the moment, I didn’t even think about the damage I could be doing. I kept running. Which is a lesson that I still fail to learn in photography. Oftentimes I get so caught up in the moment of the shot, that I forget about my own health. Don’t be like me. It’s something that I’m working on, but I still fall into from time to time. I blame it on my child-like excitement of landscape photography. I mean, we’re at an erupting volcano for fuck’s sake.
Either way, I arrived at the overlook and missed the golden hour light. So now I missed the light AND my foot was fucked up. Great…
But my tension quickly disappeared when I realized the reality of what was in front of us. One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen- golden light or now. The volcano was smoking like crazy, in beautiful streams of white smoke. I took out my Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM lens and zoomed all the way the fuck in. We were relatively far from the volcano (what was deemed a “safe distance” by the city,) so I’m glad I brought the zoom lens.
I snagged a few shots, well, a fuck ton of shots, and savored the moment.
However, the really good shots from this shoot didn’t happen until later. From our research, we’d determined that the volcano was supposed to “erupt” every couple hours. We weren’t entirely sure what that meant, but we knew it was something more than the white smoke we were currently seeing. So we set up camp and waited. And waited.
About an hour and a half later, our wish was granted. Ash came erupting out of the volcano, adding a killer contrast in the smoke formations. THESE were the photos I wanted. Here was my favorite zoom shot:
“Mt. Doom”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM
[ISO 200 ~ 198mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/2000s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
Notice how I cropped those edges perfectly in the bottom left and right corner. As I talked about in my shoot at Archeological Park Zaculeu, these crop subtleties make a big difference.
I started to realize that shooting this smoking volcano was very similar to shooting seascapes in the ocean with constantly changing waves. So I kept waiting for the perfect abstract cloud to come. Every couple seconds the formation would change with the wind. Here was my favorite cloud formation, which I took zoomed out to get a bit more context into the scene:
“Vinegar/Baking Soda”
Taken on Sony a7rIII + Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM
[ISO 200 ~ 83mm ~ f/9 ~ 1/1000s]
(Want a Print? Get one here.)
This turned out to be a solid sesh. Seeing a volcano erupt is one of those things that makes you feel like a goddamn ant on this planet, completely at the mercy of nature.
And speaking of nature, my foot was still relatively fine at this point. I’d been sitting for 1.5 hours, so I think that helped. The true pain wouldn’t kick in for a day or two.
Luckily our next shoot was at a hot spring deep in the jungle, which would give me some time to rest up until then…
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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