Thursday, July 29, 2010

Fireflies of Elkmont

While on vacation in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park in June we happen to be there for the one week of the year necessary to see a extremely rare work of nature. The once a year occurrence is the viewing of the synchronous fireflies of Elkmont. For one week or so per year, usually the first and/or second week of June, the fireflies are visible during the brief period of of their shot life span when the males flash to attract females.

I did not run this photo with my other Tennessee vacation pictures because it is not an actual photo, but is instead a collage of images of the night. The creek and the fireflies pictured are all at Elkmont on the night we were but I layered individual firefly shots over a twilight shot of the creek to recreate the actual scene as we saw remembered it between 9:30 and 10:30 the night we were there.

I knew from quite a bit of Internet research in advance that the fireflies were EXTREMELY difficult to shoot. While very bright to the human eye they are not very bright to a cameras sensor!

More on this event @ http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/site/voice_stories/the_synchronous_fireflies_of_elkmont/issue/528

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