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