from Terry Priest Firefly Photography

Fireflies have been flashing into a broader public awareness lately, well beyond those simple childhood summer evening memories of running through the yard capturing these little creatures into temporary glass prisons.

In particular, the Firefly Watch program from Boston's Museum of Science (read Dynamic Patterns Research's review from 2008) has been bringing more people together across the country to measure current back-yard populations of fire flies. Their numbers seem to be declining significantly in recent years, and the researchers guiding this great citizen science program hope to find out why our flashy little friends aren't as happy these days.

An amateur photographer from Evansville, Indiana has helped to glorify and beautify the bug by developing his own process for creating incredible still images of fire flies in action. Terry Priest started generating successful photographs using a typical hand-held four mega-pixel digital camera, and has advanced into more sophisticated equipment, including high-speed flashes.

And, his images are breathtaking. And, you can create similarly breathtaking images yourself in your own backyard... tonight. Mr. Priest has written a detailed online guidance on how to craft these images, and he hopes that his efforts will inspire other amateur photographers to explore the life of the flashing bug.

"Terry Priest photographs fireflies in flight" :: Evansville Courier and Press :: July 11, 2010

[ READ ]

[ View ] Terry Priest's Flikr photostream

Terry Priest's Tutorial on Photographing the Firefly [ READ ]