Tag Archives: insects

Dancing with Fireflies

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Common Eastern Firefly (Photinus pyralis)

Common Eastern Firefly

This week I worked out a method for making a close-up photograph of a firefly in flight, at night, with its lantern lit. It is an almost impossible photograph to make, but that’s why it was so fun. This is the story of how I did it.

The first problem I had to solve was how to get the firefly in the frame and in focus. They are impossible to see through the viewfinder and shooting from the hip is just not accurate enough for the narrow angle of view of a macro lens. Autofocus is also out of the question because there is not enough light for the autofocus sensor and the subject is too small and fast for autofocus even in daylight. So I invented the Blevins Firefly Pointing Device (patent pending) to make shooting from the hip more possible. It is a wire coat hanger bent into a loop at one end that is attached to the camera tripod mount and bent into a right angle at the other end that points toward the center of the composition (but positioned just out of frame). With the lens manually focused to the same distance as the end of the pointer, you just need to position the subject above the pointer to hopefully capture an image with the subject in frame and in focus.

The Blevins Firefly Pointing Device in action

The Blevins Firefly Pointing Device in action

Photographing a firefly with its lantern lit required a lot of practice and luck. The first three evenings I spent chasing them around my yard taught me the characteristic flight pattern of this species. These are the Common Eastern Firefly (Photinus pyralis), also sometimes called the Big Dipper Firefly because its flight pattern is somewhat like the shape of that constellation. To attract the attention of a female, the male will start from a hover, then accelerate horizontally, often with a slight downward slope, then pull up sharply into another hover. The flash occurs just as he begins to pull up and creates a J shaped streak of yellow-green light. Learning to recognize this pattern made it possible to anticipate when the flash would occur, which was helpful. Unfortunately, the flash occurs while the firefly is moving and changing direction which means the camera needs to be moving along with the firefly.

The other challenge was balancing the exposure from the light that comes from the camera flash with the light that comes from the firefly so both will show up in the photograph. Here are a few images from early in the process where I was trying to work out how to balance the light.

Common Eastern Firefly

This image was made with a small aperture for maximum depth of field to increase the chance of capturing an image in focus. The firefly's lantern was not bright enough to show up with such a small lens aperture, only the light from the camera flash registers in this image.

Common Eastern Firefly

This image was made with no camera flash, just the dim ambient light of dusk. The high ISO required to achieve a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion of a fast flying insect rendered noisy images and overexposed the firefly's light.

I eventually arrived at the best settings to balance these two approaches, with just enough sensitivity to render the firefly’s light as the brightest part of the image, and just enough light from the camera flash to capture the details of the firefly. I eventually settled on an aperture of f/16, a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second, and an ISO of 1600. I set the flash to minimum power and held it 10 to 12 inches from the subject.

After several evenings of really getting into this I found myself dancing around my yard in big dipper patterns with my flash going off just as I moved up sharply, just like a firefly. I suddenly became self conscious and hoped the neighbors were not becoming concerned, I am sure I looked ridiculous.

By the fifth evening I finally had the technique down, but even with all the practice it still took a lot of luck and most exposures were out of focus or otherwise unusable. I also discovered I was not the only one that got lucky that night…

Common eastern fireflies mating

Common eastern fireflies mating

Wild North Carolina Outtakes: Palamedes Swallowtail

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UNC Press Spring 2011 Catalog

UNC Press Spring 2011 Catalog

The cover of the spring 2011 catalog of new books from UNC Press features a photograph from Wild North Carolina of a palamedes swallowtail caterpillar preparing to pupate on a red bay leaf.

These are common butterflies in pocosins or other areas that have their favorite host plants. The caterpillars feed only on plants in the laurel family. In North Carolina that means mostly red bay (Persea borbonia) but could also include swamp bay (Persea palustris) and possibly sassafras (Sassafras albidum).

The caterpillars eat red bay leaves almost exclusively and even wrap themselves inside red bay leaves for protection when they are ready to pupate. The photograph shows a caterpillar as it begins to use silk to curl a red bay leaf around itself.

Although this is one of the most common butterflies in the coastal plain of North Carolina, it is threatened by an introduced disease that is killing its host plant. Red bay wilt disease is caused by an introduced fungus and beetle from Asia first detected in Georgia in 2002. The beetle and fungus have since spread into Florida and South Carolina.

I wanted to include a photograph of one of these caterpillars in the chapter on pocosins to make these connections, but finding a caterpillar in the wild is not easy. I was in an area of Juniper Creek near the Green Swamp with plenty of red bay trees but I had no idea how I was going to find a caterpillar. Then I saw an adult fly by as if it had some place important to go, so I followed it. I could not keep up in the thick vegetation and soon lost sight of it. Then another flew by heading in the same direction so I followed it until I lost it. A third came and I followed it a little further when I saw it land on a particularly healthy and sunlit red bay tree. It danced around the leaves as I approached and I guessed it might be laying eggs. I decided this was as good a tree as any to search for caterpillars. I looked for about 10 minutes, carefully examining one leaf after another, until I noticed one backlit leaf with a caterpillar silhouette showing through. I looked on the other side of the leaf and there it was; a full grown caterpillar almost ready to pupate!

These caterpillars have a pattern on their backs that looks like a face, to fool predators I presume. I decided on a perspective that maximized the face illusion and went to work setting up the camera. There are two spots on the back that look like eyes and a hard plate covering the head that looks like a mouth. One thing I always pay attention to when photographing animals, especially animals with dark eyes, is the reflection on the eye. Without a reflection a dark eye can look like a black hole. As I looked through the camera I noticed the wonderful reflections on the eyes but then I realized these are not really eyes and these reflections don’t change as I move the camera! That is when it hit me just how amazing this face illusion is! Those are not reflections at all; it is part of the pattern designed to look like the reflection on an eye! For a moment I forgot about taking photographs and just marveled at the incomprehensible perfection of this tiny miracle.