Piton de la Fournaise 2026: Capturing La Réunion's Volcano From the Sky
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Réunion Island's volcano, Piton de la Fournaise, is one of the most active on Earth — and in 2026 it reminded everyone why. After more than two years of silence, the volcano woke up twice in the space of a month, culminating in an eruption so powerful that lava reached the ocean for the first time in nineteen years. I was in the air on day one, camera pointed down at the fissures splitting open the flank of the mountain, golden hour light turning the fresh lava into rivers of fire. Those images became the Fire Series.
A Volcano Waking Up
The first sign came on the evening of January 18, 2026. A seismic crisis at 4:34pm gave way to volcanic tremor — magma pushing toward the surface — and within hours four fissures opened on the northern flank, sending lava fountains ten to twenty metres into the air. It lasted only two days, contained safely within the Enclos, the vast caldera that has channelled the volcano's eruptions for centuries. It was a warning shot. The real event was still to come.
The Eruption That Reached the Sea
On the morning of February 13, 2026, the ground shook again — this time on the southern flank, near Morgabine crater. Thirty-five minutes after the seismic crisis began, lava fountains tore through the surface. What followed was one of the longest and most closely watched eruptions in the volcano's recent history: 58 days of activity, with two pauses along the way.
On March 13, a lava flow crossed the forest below the volcano and cut the RN2, the road that circles the island's southeast coast. Two nights later, in the early hours of March 16, the flow reached the Indian Ocean — the first time lava from Piton de la Fournaise had met the sea in nineteen years. Steam plumes rose where molten rock hit water, and a new black platform began forming at the island's edge. The eruption paused on April 3, resumed five days later, and finally came to rest on April 12.
Shooting Day One
I'd bought my very first drone, a DJI Mavic 4 Pro, only days before. On February 12, I took it out for its first real test flight, in the forest of Bébour. The next morning, the volcano erupted.
I'd gone from a handful of practice flights over a rainforest to flying a brand-new drone I barely knew over an active eruption on the Piton de la Fournaise's southern flank — and the stress of it was real. I sent it up once, got the shots, and brought it back safely. I didn't try a second flight. Risking my first drone in a lava flow wasn't a chance I was willing to take twice.
Getting airborne on the first day of an eruption is already a race against changing conditions — ash, gas, shifting wind, a narrow window of usable light. Doing it on unfamiliar equipment, one flight only, raised the stakes further. The fountains near Morgabine were still fresh, the flows just beginning to carve their path down the flank, and golden hour gave the scene a warmth that contrasted against the raw violence of the lava itself. It's a very different kind of photography from the long-exposure, minimalist landscapes I'm usually drawn to — here, nothing stands still, and there was no second take.
The Fire Series
These aerial images are the foundation of the Fire Series collection — fine art prints of a volcano in the middle of one of its most significant eruptions in decades. Available as museum-quality Dibond and framed ArtBox pieces, each print is a record of a moment that, by the time you're reading this, geologists say may not repeat again soon: Piton de la Fournaise has been resting since late May, its ground inflation levelling off after months of activity.
Whether you were on the island watching the glow from the coast or are discovering the eruption for the first time through these photographs, the Fire Series is a way to hold onto that moment — the island's most dramatic natural event of the year, seen from above.