Andrew Allen Reynolds, a Portland pastor and amateur photographer, recently re-developed and shared a rarely-seen photo his dad took of one of Mount St. Helens later eruptions in June of 1980 from Ridgefield, Washington.
Reynolds’ dad, Gary Reynolds, 76, of Portland, jumped on Interstate 5 with his wife and snapped the shot from the side of the road with what he remembers as a Minolta SRT 101 camera body using Kodak Kodachrome 64 film.
The dramatic image shows one of the many smaller — relatively speaking — eruptions that followed the May 1980 event that blew off the mountain’s top and north face.
On June 12, 1980, “the volcano again erupted, generating ash falls to the south-southwest and pyroclastic flows down its north flank,” according to the United States Geological Survey. The USGS also says that this event formed the first of Mount St. Helen’s post-eruption lava domes.
Andrew Reynolds told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the Kodak film remained perfectly preserved for more than 40 years. He recently digitized the photo and has begun to make 4x6 prints of the image, with plans to eventually make a larger print.
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