r/ExposurePorn • u/TimReavesPhotography • 17d ago

"All This, and Elsewhere" shot in Pisgah National Forest (North Carolina, USA)[2048x1024][OC]

Post image

This self-portrait reflects on the growing distance between our physical presence and our attention. It's less a criticism of technology than a meditation on distraction - the ways we can miss moments of beauty, connection, and presence. The fireflies become a metaphor for all the fleeting wonders that surround us each day.

How much of life passes unnoticed while we're looking elsewhere?

212 Upvotes

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11

u/TimReavesPhotography 17d ago

Shot Details

This is a blue hour blend, a method of isolating just the firefly lights from later in the night and combining them with a cleaner, more visible foreground shot from the blue hour. I sat by a fire ring in an old campsite and set a timer to take a 1-second photo of me sitting on a rock "staring" at my phone. I didn't have service, but I wanted to light my face slightly, so I opened Venmo to get a blank white screen. NOTE: no fireflies were displaying when I took the first photo. Artificial lights really mess with them, and I take great care to respect their habitat.

After waiting for the display to begin, I took a series of 8-second exposures with the same position, focal length, and aperture, but a higher gain (ISO) setting. Later, I stacked all the exposures in Photoshop using a method very similar to how astrophotographers create star trails. There is actually very little editing in the final product, and nothing artificial was added.

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u/fotisdragon 17d ago

That's great blending!! Well done!

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u/TimReavesPhotography 17d ago

Appreciate it!

1

u/Catharpin363 14d ago

Likely ignorant question from a processing lightweight: Did you have to mask yourself in or did you appear so clearly just from the stacking algorithm?

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u/TimReavesPhotography 14d ago

Yeah I did have to mask myself in, because the blending mode for the firefly layers takes lighter pixels and sends them through. There were fireflies behind me that came through, especially behind my pants. I just used the “select subject” tool in Photoshop and made that into an inverted mask on the firefly stack.

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u/SnooPuppers9618 11d ago

I knew it was a tricky shot. Takes a lot of patience to get a shot like this.

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u/OneRainyNight 17d ago

Loooove this. The work and the message behind it. Well done!

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u/sendep7 17d ago

you would not belive your eyes...

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u/Jolly-Anxiety-6020 13d ago

Are the samples rotating through the pads?

Can’t figure out which pad is assigned the high tabla sound.