‘The volcano was illuminated by this beautiful light’: David del Rosario Dávila’s best phone picture

The national park ranger recalls capturing the landscape created by an eruption in La Palma

When the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma, the Canary Islands, erupted in September 2021, it caused more than 760m of damage, forcing the evacuation of 6,000 people and killing one, an elderly man who died after inhaling toxic gases. It would be 83 days before officials declared the eruption over, on Christmas Day 2021.

David del Rosario Davila has been a national park ranger in La Palma since 2016. A self-described mountain man, he took this shot in the area surrounding the eruption in late October 2022, just over a year after it had begun. The location and landscape were created by the eruption, making it one of the youngest areas on the planet," Del Rosario Davila says. Everything you see in this photograph is new. The dead trees are from a pine forest that used to exist there; the mountain is made from ash from the volcano."