National Geographic photographer Carsten Peter speaks in Calgary

Rappellinginto active volcanoes, venturingdeep into crystallized cavesand chasingmonster storms in Tornado Alley it's all in a day's work for award-winningphotographer and filmmakerCarsten Peter.

"I love to be surprised by the situations, and of course I try to reduce the danger as good as possible," said the Bavarian photojournalist, who specializes in documenting the most extreme phenomenaof the natural world.

"When whole continental shelvesare colliding, and getting liquefied, and get reborn in other places in these volcanoes, this is magnificent," Peter said.

"You can theoretically understand the geology very well, but if you stand there and you witness that, it's just overwhelming."

Peter was elected best National Geographic Photographer in 2012 and has twice won the highly covetedWorld Press Photo Award.

His enviablecareer success owes at least in part to his daring, adventurous, and seemingly insatiable curiosity.

It was this love of science that fuelled his desire toventure to thelargest lava lake in the world, the Nyiragongo Volcano in the Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Just the energy which is released there. It's the hottest lava on the planet," he said.

"The quantities are enormous. Then you witness these strangephenomenons."

There, amid lava temperatures of 2,400 FCarsten and his team were rocked bylow-frequency"infra-sound."

"That was very, very strange, because you couldn't hear it, but you felt it through the whole body. I thought I almost [went]a little crazy, but my friend experienced the same."

It's these kind of surprises and "close calls" that Peterfinds so rewarding, and hestrivesto capture and translate them for his audience.

Though he always aims to mitigate the risks involved,he admits that sometimes things boil down to sheer luck.

"You can easily underestimate these forces of nature."

You can hear Carsten Peter speak about these and many otherof his adventures live April 10 and 11at the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary. TheExtreme Planetevent is part of Arts Commons' National Geographic Live series.