STORY: There are fascinating pictures that are currently going around the world from Mauna Loa in Hawaii. The world’s largest active volcano is spewing lava again after almost 40 years of dormancy. And it was so beautiful that cameraman Mick Kalber just couldn’t help but grab his camera again. The 74-year-old was actually already retired. One of the last volcanic eruptions he filmed was at neighboring Kilauea in 2018. “It took me this to pull me out of retirement. I’ve been gardening for the past two years. The 2018 eruption was devastating. It was so gross. You know, I got up at 3 a.m. every day, then it’s filming, going home, cutting, eating, going to bed, getting up. Every day. And I was 70 at the time.” Kalber has been documenting volcanic eruptions in Hawaii for almost 40 years. He takes his spectacular shots from a helicopter. How does it feel to fly over glowing craters? “We’re flying in a device that’s fueled with jet fuel. If we go down in that stuff, we’re toast. So there’s a lot of different things that go through your mind. But being a cameraman, I am thankfully distracted and thinking about focus and framing and all that other stuff, so I’m a bit disconnected from the real danger of what’s happening.” But what excites Kalber about this inferno? “It’s kind of a microcosm of life itself. It’s got all those elements, and by the way, it’s the only force of nature that’s both destructive and creative. You know, a hurricane just destroys, a tsunami just destroys, a fire too. But here will new land built up. A lot of the surface of the earth here – 90 percent or so – was formed by volcanoes.” The elemental force of Mauna Loa is currently also attracting many onlookers. Tourists as well as the residents of the Big Island. Some of them gathered for a ceremony dedicated to the Hawaiian goddess Pele on Saturday. Hoping to appease Mauna Loa.