Photographing fireflies is a quiet act of reverence—one part science, one part patience, and all wonder.
There’s nothing quite like the quiet magic of a summer evening filled with fireflies. If you’ve ever wanted to capture that glow on camera, this guide will walk you through the process of photographing fireflies—from selecting the right lens and settings to using an intervalometer for exposure stacking. Whether you’re in your own backyard or visiting a synchronous firefly hotspot, you’ll learn how to create striking images that preserve the beauty of their flashes or light trails. With a little planning and the right technique, even beginners can create professional-looking firefly photos.
Unlike single-frame night shots, exposure stacking allows you to capture the rhythmic choreography of hundreds—sometimes thousands—of tiny lanterns pulsing in unison through the darkness. But to do it well, you need to start before the show begins.
The Right Lens for the Light
When photographing fireflies, your lens matters just as much as your settings. You’re chasing faint glows in near-darkness, so choose glass that’s built for low light.
A fast prime lens—something with a wide maximum aperture (ƒ/1.4–ƒ/2)—is ideal. Lenses like the Sigma Art 35mm ƒ/1.4 or the Canon 50mm ƒ/1.4 are excellent choices. They gather light efficiently and create beautifully crisp results, even wide open. The shallow depth of field isn’t a drawback here—it helps isolate the firefly glows against a soft, dreamy background.
Focal length depends on your vision. A 35mm gives you more of the scene—room to include trees, foreground interest, or a path winding through the woods. A 50mm narrows in, offering more intimacy and less distortion. Either can work beautifully, depending on your composition and how close you’re positioned to the action.
Step 1: Arrive Early to Frame the Story
Plan to arrive at your location well before dusk—ideally by 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. Choose a site with minimal light pollution and rich vegetation: forest edges, open woods, or meadows with a mix of grasses, shrubs, and trees. You’ll want to scout a visually interesting composition with depth and context—ferns lit by moonlight, a gentle slope of trees, or a log-strewn clearing.
Once you’ve found your frame, lock your camera onto a tripod, and don’t move it again for the rest of the night. This is crucial. Exposure stacking works best when every frame aligns perfectly.
With the last light of day hanging in the sky, take your background image first. Use a narrow aperture (like f/8 to f/11) to achieve a deep depth of field, ensuring sharpness from foreground to background. Adjust your ISO to stay low (100–400) to reduce noise in this critical base image, which will become the canvas onto which all the firefly flashes are later layered.
Step 2: Wait for the Magic Hour
After sunset, fireflies begin to stir. You might notice the flashes of a few species before the synchronous fireflies begin their show. Synchronous fireflies don’t start flashing in earnest until around 9:00 p.m., with flashing intensifying toward a peak around 10:00 to 10:30 p.m.
During the twilight lull, resist the temptation to fiddle with your tripod or reframe. Let your camera remain anchored firmly in place. Instead, set up your intervalometer—an essential tool for this technique. You’ll program it to take a photo at regular intervals, one after the next, for the next hour or more. Make a point to become well-acquainted with your intervalometer before heading out to the field. You’ll need to be able to navigate the buttons to periodically adjust camera settings, like your shutter speed, throughout the night and it’s best if the scene remains pitch black. Plan to not use flashlights or artificial light sources of any kind so as not to ruin your photos (or the other peoples’ experiences!).
Camera Settings for Photographing Fireflies
Before you click “go” on your intervalometer be sure to adjust your exposure settings for capturing fireflies:
Aperture: Open wide (f/2.8 or wider) to let in maximum light. Fireflies are subtle.
ISO: Start around 800–1600, increasing as needed as the night deepens.
Shutter Speed: Begin with a shutter of around 4 seconds per frame. As darkness thickens, you’ll want to stretch this by a few seconds every so often, eventually reaching 14-18 seconds or longer, depending on moonlight and other ambient light sources. The longer the exposure, the more glows you’ll collect—but balance that with potential overexposure from moonlight or background brightness.
Be mindful of wind—long exposures can blur foliage, which may be fine for mood, but distracting if not intentional.
Let the intervalometer run. Ideally, you’ll collect anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred frames, each with a few clean firefly flashes or trails (especially if you’re in an area with blue ghosts!). No single frame will show the full display—but together, they build a portrait of the night alive with light.
Step 3: Stack and Reveal the Light
Back at home, import your photos. First, process your background image—the deep focus twilight frame taken earlier. Then lightly adjust the firefly images (exposure, noise reduction, white balance), applying changes uniformly.
Open your background and all firefly frames as layers in Photoshop. Place the background layer at the bottom. Select all the firefly layers and set their blending mode to “Lighten.” This tells Photoshop to preserve the brightest pixels—layering firefly flashes together into a single, seamless image.
Flatten the image and make final refinements: contrast, color grading, perhaps a gentle vignette. Be careful not to over-process. The beauty of this method lies in its natural layering of time—not in digital trickery.
A Final Thought
Exposure stacking fireflies isn’t just about photography—it’s about presence. It requires patience, planning, and a kind of stillness not often demanded by the digital age. But in return, it gives you something rare: a glimpse into a secret rhythm, an ephemeral language of light written in the margins of summer.