chasing fireflies...

friday night we let the girls stay up late for a "special treat" (lol!) to catch fireflies. we had so much fun! as i'm sure you can tell, ella was a tad freaked. when one touched her she shrieked so loudly! we all were laughing so hard. anna wasn't a bit afraid, though. she kept them in the jar next to her bed for a night and fed them grass. it really took me back to the days of being a kid. we let them go tonight. but they can't wait to go out and get more. :)

eta: candi asked about how i managed to get this picture -
i took it with my rebel on manual with my 50 mm 1.8 lens (i wish i had the 1.4 - especially for this!)
the iso was 1600, the fstop was 1.8, and the shutter speed was 1/40. that's why it's quite a bit blurry. well and the girls are blurry because only the lid of the jar was picking up enough light to be able to get the camera to click into focus. i tried manual focus on a few pictures. that didn't work so well with my moving subjects! lol! a tripod would have been good - but there was that moving subjects problem with that too. ;) i took a TON of pictures but only managed to get a few with the fireflies lights actually glowing. i am glad i got lucky on a few! :) ooh - i also shoot in raw. that way i was able to more easily adjust the exposure after the picture was taken. straight out of the camera it was really dark. i also adjusted the levels and the brightness and contrast. i used neat image to remove some of the grain. it was quite a bit grainy, though, so a lot is still there.