CalevPhoto

Attack of the baby spiders!

While photographing a house in Seattle a few weeks ago, my kids found a ton of baby spiders that had just hatched on the stairs leading up to the house.  Of course I could not resist getting some photos!  Here is the group of spiders to give you an idea how many there were.

A little bit of research at bugguide.net revealed that these are baby orb weaver spiders.  Everywhere around the stairs they were spinning webs.  They were crawling on the ground and a few of them even tried to create a nest on my camera!  Of course, I couldn’t resist getting a closer look at them.

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Some more work on composition

About two weeks ago, temperatures were only a little bit chilly on the weekend so I went out to see what I could find.  I also went out to try to improve my compositions.  It is my goal to not just take identification pictures of insects and other small creatures – but to give them personality and make pleasing shots to look at.

Most of the small critters were hard to find that day, but I did find some interesting things.  This one I found rather cute and it looks almost like the worm is introducing himself!

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The Mystery of the Six Legged Spider

This weekend I took a brief opportunity to look at what I could find outside.  The weather has been cold here and we recently got over a snowstorm, so I wasn’t too optimistic.  In addition, it started raining soon after I got out so I didn’t have much time to take any pictures.

I did manage to find this tiny spider though on my kids’ slide.

This spider was incredibly tiny – requiring 5x magnification from my MP-E 65 to get this shot.  After downloading the shot, I looked through some of my books to attempt to get an ID – but after some investigation I can 100% say I have no idea what type of spider this is.

When my wife looked at the picture, she picked out an obvious mystery.  It only has six legs.

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Creepy crawly Wednesday

Not too much too say today, so I thought I would post a few creepy crawly shots.  I hope at least one of these grosses you out a bit, because otherwise I’m not doing my job.

I took all of these about two months ago shortly before shooting a house for Nelya.  She didn’t mind too much that I showed up quite dirty from my previous shoot.

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A very photogenic spider

Last weekend I had a chance in the morning to get out and take some photos.  I found some interesting bugs, some of which I will blog about at later dates.  After a bit of time I found an interesting moth on the side of my shed.  Perhaps unfairly to the moth, I had an ill feeling about it from growing up in upstate New York where gypsy moths devastated quite a few trees.

Still, I used the opportunity to get a number of shots of it.  It clearly was on its last legs as it was no longer able to fly – just crawl around.  I debated a bit about what to do with it when I noticed a spider web with on orb weaver spider next to our house.  Naturally, you can guess what my idea was.

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My first attempt at combining macro shots

Recently I have been thinking a bit about combining shots to achieve a greater depth of field.  When I noticed that some of the shots I took today of a spider with its prey were similar but had different parts in focus, I decided to give it a try.  The following is the end result.

Continue for more on how I did this.

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The amazing jumping spider

As many of you have probably figured out by now, spiders are one of my favorite subjects to photograph.  Besides the fact that they are really cool looking, most species are usually easy to photograph.  Once in awhile a particular spider gives me problems, but usually they pose very nicely.  Lately, I have not found this to be the case with jumping spiders.

Jumping spiders, unlike many other types of spiders, have very good vision.  They need this vision to be able to attack insects with their traditional jump.  They tend to stay very still and then jump on top of their prey.  Many other types of insects go more on scent or on vibrations.  The result is jumping spiders are very aware of both me and the camera.  This can make them rather tricky to photograph, as they often do not give me their better side.  They also tend not to be very large, meaning I need to use a magnification of at least 3x to get them.  The following is one of the better shots I have gotten of a jumping spider.  Unfortunately it entered the house so Nelya squished it while I was putting my camera away.

Recently I had another opportunity to photograph these fascinating spiders.  The results after the jump.

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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.

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It’s freezing here!

OK, perhaps I have lived in the Pacific Northwest too long, because I should not be surprised at snow in April, which was very common in upstate New York where I grew up.  However, here it is a very strange phenomenon to be so cold and receive snow that actually sticks to the ground close to April!  Last week it was cold and rainy almost every day, which has made insect photography much more difficult.  On Thursday I spend an hour by the pond near my office and for the first time that I can remember I couldn’t find a single interesting thing to take a photograph of.  Other than a few pill bugs there wasn’t much that I could find interesting.  I had hoped to find a spider web with dew drops on it, but the majority of ground spiders (the larger orb weavers aren’t out yet) decided to not show up.

However, I felt the need to be stubborn and spent some time on Friday in my backyard, where I have a better sense of where to find certain insects.  Still, I found it very difficult to find much of interest to photograph.  I eventually decided to cool looking for insects and photographed a dandelion that was ready to burst.

Generally I have found that when I have difficulty finding something, turn to a different subject and your original subject will eventually capture your eye.  Shortly after playing with the dandelion, this turned out to be true once again.

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It’s freezing here!

OK, perhaps I have lived in the Pacific Northwest too long, because I should not be surprised at snow in April, which was very common in upstate New York where I grew up.  However, here it is a very strange phenomenon to be so cold and receive snow that actually sticks to the ground close to April!  Last week it was cold and rainy almost every day, which has made insect photography much more difficult.  On Thursday I spend an hour by the pond near my office and for the first time that I can remember I couldn’t find a single interesting thing to take a photograph of.  Other than a few pill bugs there wasn’t much that I could find interesting.  I had hoped to find a spider web with dew drops on it, but the majority of ground spiders (the larger orb weavers aren’t out yet) decided to not show up.

However, I felt the need to be stubborn and spent some time on Friday in my backyard, where I have a better sense of where to find certain insects.  Still, I found it very difficult to find much of interest to photograph.  I eventually decided to cool looking for insects and photographed a dandelion that was ready to burst.

Generally I have found that when I have difficulty finding something, turn to a different subject and your original subject will eventually capture your eye.  Shortly after playing with the dandelion, this turned out to be true once again.

Continue Reading…