The Kamchatka Peninsula by

The Kamchatka Peninsula

Nature, second prize stories

20-09-2003

The Kamchatka peninsula presents a landscape of geysers, boiling lakes and active volcanoes. The Kamchatka Peninsula is a 1,250-kilometre-long (780 mi) peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about 270,000 km² (100,000 sq mi). It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west. Immediately offshore along the Pacific coast of the peninsula runs the 10,500-metre (34,400-ft) deep Kuril–Kamchatka Trench.

Commissioned by: Le Figaro Magazine / Grands Reportages

Photo Credit: Olivier Grunewald

Olivier Grunewald was born in Paris in 1959. He started photographing birds at the age of 14. After studying commercial advertising photography at the Gobelins school of images, in Paris, he began to work as freelance photographer specialized in sports, mountaineering and rock climbing. Later, he began to focus more on landscape and wildlife, spending five months in French Guyana working on leatherback turtles - work that was awarded a World Press Photo prize in the nature category in 1995. In 1997, Grunewald began work on a book, Images of Creation, which tells in pictures the story of beginnings of universe and of life on Earth. In the process, he started to photograph the Northern Lights and active volcanoes - for him a fascinating personal discovery that sparked a long-term project on volcanoes and auroras. This project led to two further World Press Photo awards, in 2002 for work on the Northern Light and space weather, and in 2004 with a series of pictures on the volcanoes of Kamtchatka. He now travels all over the world to with his wife, the geographer, journalist and writer Bernadette Gilbertas. Together they have published 14 books, the most recent being a book about Iceland (September 2011).