The restless night owl Peggy Ahwesh likes to travel and “have adventures.”
So since the “world was topsy turvy this summer,”* she scouted locations in upstate NY during the day, drove out along deserted country roads in the midnight hour (and they were very deserted this year) and took pictures of the stars and her fellow nocturnals, the fireflies.
The equipment she employed was a regular DSLR camera with a downloaded time lapse app, a tripod and a flashlight. She used the flashlight to focus the camera which scared away the flies (actually beetles), waited for them to come back, set the app to take 60 pictures in twenty minutes, pressed start and drank tea in her car by the side of the road in pitchblack darkness.
I asked if it was scary, and she said “I wasn’t scared, but it was eerie.”
The film was made in her backyard in Catskill. Ahwesh used the neighbors’ motion sensor lights to provide extra color and drama:
‘Backyard’ by Radio/Guitar, Peggy Ahwesh on shortwave & Barbara Ess on guitar.
I asked her how she programmed the lights.
“Oh, I just would go over and wave my arms around them.”
Ahwesh really is a master of using high and low technology for unintended purposes and unexpected results.
—CNQ
*All quoted remarks are Ahwesh’s own words.
