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Campsite Nightlight
Campsite Nightlight
draig


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Mundane II (Basic Editing)
Camera: Canon EOS-500D Rebel T1i
Lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
Location: Pickerel, Wisconsin
Date: Jun 8, 2012
Aperture: 10.0
ISO: 400
Shutter: 213
Date Uploaded: Jun 9, 2012

Ingredients:
One mundane glass "Ball" brand Mason Jar (carefully replace the ordinary metal portion of the lid with a moist paper towel for 02), One very old Kerosene Lantern circa 1970 (Older than myself), Fireflies courtesy of Bog Brook a little less than 1/4 mile away from our vacation cabin, one June Bug, one Double Spotted Sphinx Moth, a few pieces of pink and white granite (found all over the ground around these parts), local fauna including fresh dandelions, clover,long grass from the back part of the property and 1/2 cup of well water.

Instructions: Place the granite into the bottom of the jar carefully to avoid breaking the old mason jar, painstakingly prop up the flowers, grass, stems, etc. between the granite chunks, add water and long grass as needed (kind of like building a ship in a bottle- which coincidentally I've never done and have an all new appreciation for). Wait until sunset to gather the fireflies (I lost count after about 40); making sure the clever little buggers don't climb out the top part of the jar as you try to put them in... last but certainly not least you must be willing to fight off squadrons of bird sized mosquitoes during the entire trapping of the fireflies.

Light the kerosene lamp with the wick as low as you can get it to still produce light, place near the mason jar. Set up your camera on a tripod with your remote switch ready, bulb setting ready, and begin the microcosm experiment. By the way, I found that doing all this with an infrared headlamp kept the fireflies actively lighting up the jar for hours, whereas the previous nights experiment with the lights on in the cabin yielded less than stellar results. In fact, the minute your experiment goes indoors with any lights on the fireflies seem to go irretrievably into power-save mode. Tech support was absolutely no help with this aspect of firefly behavior. Take several hours of experimental long exposures until the fireflies cooperate and voila. The only failed part of the experiment is really the double spotted sphinx moth who just refused to do anything but hide against the top of the jar and the June bug who hid in relative darkness near the bottom of the jar (though if you search carefully it is kind of like a "Where's Waldo" picture... but with a June Bug). After trying everything from 1.5 minutes to 15 minutes of exposure as well as a horde of f/stops- one of them turned out to be, in my opinion, satisfactory. If you like this lower resolution version for the challenge you should see the full blown resolution. =)

Basic Editing: cropped a tiny bit, resized for the challenge, added minimal saturation to the overall exposure and made a tiny color correction to the overall exposure.

Hope you enjoy!

Statistics
Place: 84 out of 134
Avg (all users): 5.3393
Avg (commenters): 8.0000
Avg (participants): 5.2979
Avg (non-participants): 5.3692
Views since voting: 288
Views during voting: 197
Votes: 112
Comments: 1
Favorites: 0


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AuthorThread
 Comments Made During the Challenge
06/16/2012 04:42:47 AM
Great atmosphere in this. The bottle lights up many memories! Lovely


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