Sunday, August 24, 2014

Lightning Bugs

 Lightning bugs are one of my favorite parts about living in the country during the summer.  They always remind me of childhood and running out barefoot with old Mason jars and trying to catch as many flickering lights as possible.  Of course, once they were brought inside the magic somehow disappeared.  The 20 glowing lights, became 20 gross bugs crawling everywhere and it wasn't quite the same.  But somehow the memory of the time catching them became even more special. 
What's one of your favorite magical parts about summer evenings?

16 comments:

  1. Nice photos. I never found it at my city, become more pathetic because I didn't find something magical here, but your post remind me to start searching for it

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  2. I've never seen lighting bugs in real life. Probably because I live in a city. I have seen many fireworks this summer. They are magical, aren't they?

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    1. Oooo fireworks are such a magical memory to think back to. Agreed, they're very magical! There's a parking garage in the city of my home town that my friends and I like to watch fireworks from and it always looks spectacular!

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  3. I've never seen then either! I don't think we even have them here in the UK. So pretty though! I love the smell of summer evenings. Where I am there is always a smoky evening smell as if everyone is having a barbecue.

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    1. Hi Helena! Aw that's a bummer that you don't have lightning bugs, but summer smells are transcendent! What a great summer memory, thank you for sharing :)

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  4. Love your lightening bug photos. I have many fond memories of hot Louisiana nights spent chasing them down with jars and putting them on the bedside table. Thanks for the mind jog.

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  5. great memory !!! but....not Masonite jars....Mason !!!

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    1. Oops, you're right! I mix up my words all of the time, thank you for correcting me!

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  6. Sound of my childhood is definitely frog's croak, but actually i can hear it even now every summer evening.
    your photos are beautiful. there's no lightning bugs in my contry. i mean, maybe there are some of this bugs but i have never seen them. (sorry for bad english!)

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  7. I've never seen them live... But I googled the bugs once and as you stated, gross they were!
    I still prefer Winter nights to Summer nights... I'm a pluviophile, what can we do?
    xx

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  8. Another lovely post, as always. I wanted to let you know, I mentioned and linked to your blog in a recent post I wrote. It will show up on my blog tomorrow (August 27th). It's about how to style good shots (of which I really consider you to be the master in blogosphere). On Thursday I'll be putting up another post on how to model or pose nicely. Please check it out if you're interested.

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  9. And I think one of my favorite things about summer evenings here in Seattle is the sunset, when the sun heats up the air over the water, causing wind, and the wind blows in the smell of the sea.

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    1. Hi Rebecca!

      First, thank you so much for the feature in your post! That was so sweet of you. Also, what a really great and informative post series. I would have loved something like that when I first started taking self portraits. It would have saved me a lot of bad shots, I'm sure. haha.

      Also, you make me want to visit Seattle just to experience an evening like that! It sounds absolutely incredible. My sister lived in Seattle for the past few years - I'll have to ask her if she ever took notice of the wind blowing in the smell of the sea! Thanks for sharing :)

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  10. Your blog is such a joy to read (and look at) Esther.
    If you have a moment, do you have a good reference books (or more than one) for learning sewing techniques?
    Best of luck in your coming year of school!

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    1. Hi Indigo! Thank you for your kind complement about my blog!

      And oh my goodness, yes I do! I'm not sure what stage you are at in sewing, but if you're beginning a book that I really enjoyed was Sew U by Wendy Mullin. She has a few series of books, but Sew U was her first and it talked through the basics of sewing clothing. The Burdastyle Handbook is great for beginning levels as well.

      Which, I also recommend checking out their website - Burdastyle.com. Check out their How To section and the Forum section as well. People are always posting different techniques and you can search pretty much anything.

      I'm not sure if that's the kind of techniques that you were talking about, but if you'd like more advanced book recommendations just let me know and I can give you another list :)

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  11. Hi Esther, just found your blog and I will go back and read through posts. So many fantastic creations. I really admire your photography. And these lightning bug photos are beautiful. My summer memory is very warm evenings here in California, too hot to sleep so my mom would put our nighties in the freezer, my sister and I would go swimming very late and then jump out, my parents would dry us off quickly and then we would put our frozen nighties on and go to bed. It was deliciously cool if only for a few minutes. and it looking back it was such a fun thing for our parents to do for us. As for lightning bugs, I had always seen mention in books etc but we don't have them here. I was visiting some friends on Long Island and happened to look out over the field at dusk and was absolutely amazed. My friends were amused but of course to them they were ordinary, but to me it was magical. Summer evenings are full of magic in so many ways. I look forward to reading your blog regularly, Beth

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