Tackling the recycle bin

The other night Nelya asked me if I could take the garbage out and then drag the cans to the street for the garbage and recycle trucks to pick up.  Normally this would be a rather short task, but you know me.  I threw several things in the recycle bin and then noticed - “hey, there’s a spider on this can!”.  Then I also noticed an interesting beetle or fly, and then noticed that perhaps the blue of the recycle bin would make an interesting background.  I hauled the recycle bin to the street, making sure not to upset the spider too much, then ran to get my camera.

Unfortunately, this particular spider did not feel like getting it’s picture taken.  It made it clear that I would expect a battle to get a decent shot of it.  After chasing it all around the recycle bin it used a silk thread to slide off the top of the bin and dropped to the pavement to run to safety.  There I decided to take a shot of it, as I didn’t know who would win the ensuing struggle.

The above shot isn’t very interesting, but I at least wanted a chance to guess what type of spider it is.  Most spiders are not difficult to photograph.  Ones found in the house will often sit still for some time as long as you avoid bumping them.  This one, though, seemed to be running for its life - particularly from my large camera - perhaps it took the camera for a bird.

I finally managed to use to leaves - one to get the spider to crawl on top of and the other to coax the spider to climb on top.  I then set the spider back on the recycle bin and hoped it wouldn’t take off again.  Interestingly, when you transport a spider to a new place I have noticed most of them do not take off, but instead remain extremely still.  I used this moment to get a shot of it.

I’m not quite sure whether I like this shot, but I wasn’t very happy with the pose at the time so I waited for it to take a move off the ridge.  Sure enough it did and I corned the spider again with my camera.

I think I like this shot better than the other one.  As usual I got a number of shots of it from this angle and many of the other ones used the rule of thirds.  However I think I like the spider centered in the shot better.  It’s certainly nothing anyone would hang on the wall, but I do like the contrast of the spider and the blue recycle bin.

After taking a number shots of the spider, I figured it was about fed up with me so I moved to the fly/beetle.  Unfortunately this thing I was not able to get a very good shot of.  This shot I got of the head.

To get a better idea what type of insect this is, I took a shot of the entire body.  It appears to be very similar to one I found last week.  Unfortunately the shot did not turn out well but I hope it will be enough for when I have time to identify it.

Finally I decided to do a short experiment based on other insect photographers that I have seen take interesting shots by their cars.  I investigated my car and sure enough there were some interesting insects.  Unfortunately Nelya called that it was dinner time so I only had the chance to get this shot of a whitefly or small mother looking the other way.

I hope to soon get the chance to case out my car again in the search for interesting bugs.

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Tags: insect, macro, photography, spider