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FAIRFIELD – A Fairfield photographer has won a prestigious award from the National Wildlife Federation.

Radim Schreiber won the grand prize in the federation’s 2024 Garden for Wildlife Photo Contest, beating out 5,000 other submissions. Schreiber’s winning entry was taken in his garden, showing a firefly resting on top of a flower, its light illuminating the flower and surroundings.

Upon receiving this recognition, Schreiber told the federation how amazing the firefly is that such a small insect can create so much light.

“When I saw the firefly climbing up the flower, I got ready to capture its moment of magic,” Schreiber told the federation, according to its website nwf.org. “I knew the firefly would likely reach the top and flash to attract its mate. I was lucky. It flashed a couple of times before taking off, allowing me to press the shutter at the right moment and capture the beauty of its light illuminating the wildflowers.”

In that same photo contest, another of Schreiber’s photos received an Honorable Mention, which shows fireflies illuminating flowers with a full moon in the background.

Schreiber said that his grand prize photo was taken in May 2017, and shows a rare and somewhat endangered species of firefly that appears in Fairfield early in the summer. He said that what made that photo special was how the wood anemone’s flower petals became a diffuser for the firefly’s yellow flash.

“I was super excited because the way the light shines on the flower was something I had been wanting to get,” Schreiber said. “This is only possible with the latest camera technology and the surrounding light.”

Schreiber said he’s been photographing fireflies since 2008, and the camera technology back then could not have captured this shot. He said the camera he uses now is about four times more sensitive to light than his original one.

For wildlife photographers, timing is everything, and that’s true for insect photography as well. In fact, Schreiber said there is only a 15-minute window during which to photograph a firefly from when they start flashing until it’s too dark and the background loses its color.

“I choose not to use a flash, and that’s because I want to see the beautiful glow of the firefly in its natural luminosity,” he said. “If I used a flash, it would interfere with how it shines, and the fireflies don’t like it. It disturbs them.”

Schreiber graduated from Maharishi International University in 2004 with a degree in digital media and a focus on insect photography. He looked for opportunities to get a photo of a firefly landing on a blade of grass. Fireflies interested him because he never saw them in his native Czechoslovakia. Schreiber searched the internet to see if other photographers were focusing on fireflies, but didn’t see any.

“There were almost no photographs of fireflies when I started,” he said. “Back in 2004, the cameras were not very good, and since there were no good photographs of fireflies online, it inspired me to do something people hadn’t done before.”

Schreiber has turned his interest in fireflies into a fulltime occupation as an artist, traveling around the country to capture images and videos of fireflies as well as going on tour to market his work at outdoor art festivals. Last year, he went to shows in cities such as Washington, D.C. and Portland, Oregon, and this year he’s planning a tour through the middle of the country, hitting Dallas-Fort Worth, Kansas City, St. Louis, Ann Arbor, Madison and Louisville.

Those interested in learning more about Schreiber and his photography can visit his website at fireflyexperience.org.