Comments on: Réunion Erupts

Réunion Erupts

djgh — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 21:29:26 -0800

The volcano Piton de la Fournaise on the island of Réunion has erupted. Réunion, 800km from Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is technically part of the EU as an overseas département of France. The latest eruption (BBC video, requires Realplayer) of Piton de la Fournaise has resulted in some beautiful photos Top right - Voir le diaporama.

By: chlorus

chlorus — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 21:53:40 -0800

That volcano better buy some carbon offsets!

By: blahblahblah

blahblahblah — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 22:13:29 -0800

Those are some pretty amazing shots - I wonder how she gets the effects here and here, for example. Volcanoes are amazing and all, but nature doesn't usually look like that without some camera trickery.

By: stenseng

stenseng — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 22:16:21 -0800

Man, I guess dude likes his photoshop a little...

By: djgh

djgh — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 22:17:53 -0800

I got that impression as well, but of these he said: "The light is entirely natural, here, of course. The orange tint is because of the reflection of the fire on the heavy sky composed only, this time, of thick clouds from the eruption!"

By: painquale

painquale — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 22:20:16 -0800

Those pictures are unreal. There's a restaurant on Duluth Street in Montreal that serves Réunion cuisine. It was really good. I've always loved that Montreal harbored a nice restaurant of such wonderfully obscure nationality.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 22:36:37 -0800

Those kinds of eruptions are a lot prettier to watch than the ones we have here in the NorthWest. But maybe not as spectacular (says the guy who was living here on May 18, 1980).

By: parudox

parudox — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:15:09 -0800

Some of those photos are quite cool. (I think some of the effects on the other shots are explained with HDR.)

By: ArkhanJG

ArkhanJG — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:18:43 -0800

blahblahblah: The odd lighting (which I admit does look a lot like the HDR style) is down to the airborne ash, which causes an eclipse-like effect. a 2 minute google turned up this 1996 photo from here with a similar effect; I've seen it a few times before.

By: ikalliom

ikalliom — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:44:51 -0800

I can't tell if all his pictures are as heavily retouched, but the image in the first link has been mangled through so much photoshop, including the dreaded HDR, that it's somewhere in between a painting and a photograph. The last link has some nice single exposures.

By: imperium

imperium — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:19:46 -0800

Well, "Ms Geekette" looks like a comely volcano-watching partner. Apologies for being shallow.

By: trinarian

trinarian — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 08:56:22 -0800

a curious side effect of islands like Réunion is that "the EEZ of France covers approximately 8% of the total surface of all the EEZs of the world, whereas the land area of the French Republic is only 0.45% of the total land area of the Earth."

By: taosbat

taosbat — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 21:21:24 -0800

I thought the pictures were very interesting although I'm pretty ignorant of the photoshopping techniques which may, or may not, have been used. I think it's cute that the flickr slide show says, "La Fournaise is our very much alive volcano," instead of something like, "La Fournaise is the very much alive volcano by which we live."