Blue Fire - Kawah Ijen

A miner warms his hands over the fire early in the morning as the liquid sulfur burns blue in the background... I'm not big on making excuses, but for this image, I was moving very fast because of the large clouds of sulfur smoke blowing directly into us from this cliff. I wish I could have composed it better without that rock in the bottom right, but it is what it is :) Later I was informed that the sulfur smoke actually wrecked a 5d2 and 2 lenses a few weeks earlier; apparently the smoke is really bad for cameras..

We started hiking at 2am though, so that we could get down to where the miners do their work while it was still dark. It was also very windy on this particular morning, and huge clouds of sulfur smoke would blow into us for about 20-30 seconds at a time. The smoke burns your eyes and your throat, but since the guide (Retired miner of 15 years) wasn't wearing a mask, I figured I didn't need to put mine on either :) These guys are hardcore to say the least...

You can read more about here if you are interested:
http://www.jesse-estes.com/kawah-ijen-indonesia/

Canon 16-35II