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

Nico Nico's

I took this shot at Nico Nico's [www.nikonikos.com/] restaurant on Montrose in Houston this past Sunday.

Traveling Man

This shot is of a vignette inside an antique railroad car at the Rosenberg Railroad Museum taken at the "Second Annual Rosenberg Railroad Festival & Hobo Days" event early in May of this year.

Baytown Nature Center Floral

This shot was taken at the Baytown Nature Center about six weeks ago. To me it's one of those shots that have several identifiable flaws that I like anyway.

BNC Ducks

These ducks were swimming around a small pond at the Baytown Nature Center a month or so ago.

Battleship Texas OTB

An over-the-bow shot of the Battleship Texas. This, like yesterdays post, is also a 3 shot handheld HDR produced with Photomatix Pro and finished with Topaz Adjust in CS3.

Battleship Texas

I've processed this image in the spirit of some of the over-the-top machinery images that I've seen posted on Topaz Lab's Facebook page @ http://www.facebook.com/topazlabs. Many of the images I like however are processed using Topaz Clean which I do not currently own. I do think this one gets close to replicating the look.