Silly fake or the real deal?

wow, pretty cool.

Nice, nice, nice! I was just teaching my students about the "illusion" of compression of perspective using telephoto primes/zooms. This shot replacing 30mins of lecture! Bravo!

I thought it was a nice compositing job. Great stuff!

I'm glad the clip can be of some use to your lecture!

Thanks again for all the comments. I remember when my friend who was leading the expedition uploaded similar footage to Youtube it went viral and caused quite a lot of "discussion" with many people claiming the whole thing was faked!

James.

No heat shimmers?

Very good point. I'm wondering if the heat is radiating upwards so quickly it doesn't create the traditional mirage style shimmer. A couple of clips of the lava lake without anyone in the foreground and no shimmer:

Is it real or just a composite??

Would not care to hazard a guess without seeing at least a full-rez still....looks cool though. I figure it would be easy enough either way, lit foreground or comp. Looks like a great end-of-montage/episode/chapter shot.

Looks great, as stockshooter said, no heat shimmers as he called them. I think if you could add those in and tweak the contrast a bit, it would look even better.