Fireflies flash to attract mates, so essentially what you're seeing in the slideshow above is a firefly dance club. Does that make these long-exposure and multiple-exposure shots any less majestic? Not a chance.
The bugs' bioluminescence is the result of chemical reactions within their bodies. And since the photographer overlays multiple photos to create some of the individual images, the resulting piece is a fantasy, with far more dots of light than you'd find in an ordinary firefly jamboree.
The photographer--35-year-old Tsuneaki Hiramatsu from Okayama City, Japan--takes the pictures for fun. Wired tracked him down, and when asked about the viral success of his photos, he said: “I was like, what happened?!”
But even though firefly photography makes the internet rounds from time to time, Hiramatsu's masterful use of photographic techniques have marked his works with distinction.
In the long-exposure shots, like slide 3, check the erratic paths the insects take through the air. In the multiple-exposure images, like slide 4, try to track where each bug was at various moments in time.
More of Hiramatsu's work can be found on his site, here.
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