Headlong, I plunged three miles down into the Haleakala crater. The trails were deceptive in the same way the distances, scale and scope were to photograph. As a tourist on foot I was overwhelmed and began to mostly document what I saw. Everywhere I stepped there was evidence of volcanic upheaval. The silence was deafening in effect. I could easily see how explosive this place must have been. Noise and heat. Steam and flame! But today it was cold and sometimes damp. I let the clouds substitute for steam. I was afloat in space and time. The rock foreground gave the feeling of a barrier separating safety from the unknown of the inner crater. The three miles back out was proof that I was hiking an inverted mountain. It took twice as long to get out as it did to go in. As I rested often, I was amazed at how much the scale changed. With the blue sky making cold shadows, I used the LB Warming Polarizer and two-stop soft-step ND Grad to hold detail in the clouds.