topic Re: Backyard Faerie Fire in Share Your Photos

Backyard Faerie Fire

SignifDigits — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 19:25:33 GMT

You have to open and expand the photo to see what's there. Really just fireflies. Those streaks in the air are males trying to attract the females on the ground (still a few there if you look). Those in the trees are either settled in for mating, or there is a variety of female that flash in a way to attract males and eat them, or perhaps just other species that just prefer trees. There are about 20 species in this area - not all of them flash, and I'm sure there aren't 20 in this photo.

This is a departure for me in post-processing - much more digital artwork than usual. I used DPP4 to saturate and contrast the fireflies and converted 83ea. 30-second shots using the intervalometer into JPEGs. I then fed those into DeepSkyStacker for stacking to create a TIF file. Final adjustments were made in Luminar Neo.

I love having so many fireflies in my back yard and wanted to see if I could capture some of the wonder of seeing them every night. I chose not to defocus them and turn them into glowing balls as many folks do and see how it turned out. I also didn't take hours of shots and have the tree glow as nicely as I've seen others do as my commitment wasn't such I was wanting to stay up until midnight or beyond. Blur at the top of the trees caused by some wind.

Overall, even though you have to open the file to really see the large number of fireflies, I'm pretty pleased with the results. I cropped out a number of other trees that are also blinking every night.

This was my third night to try various approaches. It was a fun experiment, and I'm mostly posting here to encourage others to think of fun things to try. I've enjoyed them every year and never thought of trying to capture a shot with in it before. Maybe next year I will try a different approach.

It's rainy now and I don't know if they are done for the season yet or not, but would like to catch one in a macro shot. Maybe next year if not this one. I saw a super nice pic and video by a Albert Dros in the Netherlands. Interesting enough fireflies there do not blink so he adjusted his continuous shots so they appeared to do so. He also used star stacking software - StarStaX.

But the BEST part is not the pic but that I get to see this light show myself in my back yard every year. I call them "God's Christmas lights", but I also like thinking of them as faeries.

Re: Backyard Faerie Fire

SignifDigits — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:25:54 GMT

I lean toward darker - maybe too dark - opposite of Sara, perhaps. I'm curious if anyone might care to comment on whether they prefer this lighter one better than the first one posted.

Re: Backyard Faerie Fire

LeeP — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 18:09:25 GMT

For me the lighter is much more illustrative of what is going on.

Re: Backyard Faerie Fire

SignifDigits — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 18:50:54 GMT

Thanks for the feedback Lee. I agree - I gotta learn to lighten up a bit! 🙂

Re: Backyard Faerie Fire

LeeP — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:38:55 GMT

You do you!! Represent your photographs the way you want them to be seen not the way someone tells you they should be seen. Either way the fire flies reminded me of Ohio a million years ago.

Re: Backyard Faerie Fire

SignifDigits — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 21:22:25 GMT

Thanks Lee. It's fun to try to capture some of the delight of watching them and experiment with different presentations of the pics. Fireflies were on a serious decline due to DDT for a number of years (so I'm told, but I expect any insecticide is an issue) but seem to have made a serious comeback. As they are nasty tasting and/or toxic to many predators (except for the "femme fatale" variety) they are likely to continue to proliferate. At least I hope so. I remember catching them in a jar as a kid in eastern Texas. Of course I also remember chasing after the mosquito killing fogger being towed behind the truck that was spewing out DDT - just one of the many carcinogens that was deemed "safe for humans" in the 1960s.