I recently spent some time camping along the New River in North Carolina mountains. Fun fact the New River is actually believed to be in the top 5 oldest rivers in the world possibly 2nd oldest.

This time of year I was hoping the fire flies would be out and I was not disappointed.

This was shot at 50mm f/2.8 iso 2000 and 10 second exposures. I blended 232 photos for the fire flies with the lighten blend mode in photoshop. I would have used the same amount of photos for the star trails but clouds rolled in and it just muddied up the sky. I decided on using only about 30 or so photos for the star trails. I tried to find a balance between star trails and clouds, because every time I added a photo using the lighten blend mode more clouds would also come in and brighten up the sky in a way I thought that didn't look great.

After I got everything blended I used some selective adjustments in photoshop, camera raw, and Lightroom. Basically using masking to selectively edit the foreground and sky.

This photo is best viewed on a big screen.

Thanks for looking!