Mountaintop Fireflies

Mountaintop fireflies! This hayfield is at 2500 feet elevation, perched high above our little Catskills hollow. It's a bit surprising to find fireflies in abundance up here, well above the soggy bottomlands.

One firefly's path seems to be reaching for the dazzling stars of the Milky Way.

I often stack hundreds of frames to show the great numbers and chaos of a night of firefly mating. But this image is simpler so we can see the distant mountains: just two sky frames stacked and five for the foreground. It's less than two minutes of firefly romance. You can imagine the rest!

Sony a7iii
Sigma DC DN 16mm lens
f/1.6, ISO 1250, 20 seconds per frame

2 frames aligned and stacked for the sky.
5 frame stacked for the foreground.