Denis Budkov's Image

In December 2009, Kljuchevsky erupted and continued to belch fire for a year.

It's the highest active volcano in Eurasia and one of a belt of volcanoes on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, where Denis lives. Indigenous people believe that, when the raven god Kuth created Kamchatka, this was the point where he held it, which is why the mountain remains unsealed. On Denis' arrival, after nightfall, he heard 'a great roaring and saw that there was a massive flame coming out of the crater'. After this, magma spurted out like a gigantic sparkler, flowing down the volcano's flanks as crimson lava. The next day, the sky was thick with clouds of ash up to two kilometres (more than a mile) high. Denis took this image of the thick lava streams glowing in the dusk two days later, with a lenticular cloud hovering overhead. 'To be there during such a big explosion and see the volcano in all its glory was something I will never forget,' he says.