While We Slept: Photographing Fireflies

For a little over 10 years Pete Mauney has been dedicating two months of every summer in the pursuit of fireflies where they live and breathe with a small army of cameras and a very reliable car. Around where he lives in rural New York State, he’s blessed with an abundance of airborne bioluminescence—generally by the side of the road (which brings its own excitement).

This presentation of Pete’s firefly photography will not be so much a technical one (although he won’t shy away from that angle), but rather a practical one. An entertaining behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make these images year after year. What it’s like to be completely surrounded by a life-transforming, absolutely silent light show that beats any hallucinogen and doing his best not to screw it up with his camera or by tripping over a tripod.

It will be about utter beauty. It will be about fear. It will be about logistics. About safety protocols wisely followed for working at night in public spaces. It will be about the importance of failure and success, and sometimes the special combination of the two. It will be about endless learning and endless storage drives. It will be about coyotes and owls and mosquitos and ticks and drunk drivers. It will be about all the wing-nut characters he meets in the dark. It will be about frequent interactions with law enforcement (with special tips on how to hypnotize them in to following you on Instagram and opening up locked gates and/or just looking the other way).

Finally, it will be about mesmerizing beauty. Come for the pictures, stay for the stories.