Night

After my recent post about the impossibility of photographing fireflies, my friend Kevin suggested I try to shoot them using a tripod and the manual settings on my camera.

I'd been thinking about buying a tripod. But fortunately Dave already had one -- a mini-tripod that he used with his own point-and-shoot digital camera. Last night, I screwed my camera onto Dave's tripod and went out to the field behind our apartment.

Unfortunately, there weren't many fireflies around. The field has been mowed, and it's also been bloody hot the past few days -- maybe these factors diminished their activity. The few shots I took of fireflies alone turned out muddy and unfocused, with faint green blurry dots or streaks. (How does one focus a camera in pitch darkness, anyway?)

So I turned the camera lens on our apartment building, and got some cool shots. This one includes a few fireflies, visible as green streaks. I like how the lights in my neighbors' windows blaze as brightly as suns. In a larger resolution (click photo), there's more detail to the building, the trees and the grass, and the stars are visible in the sky.