DSS 104 - Spider shots

sapphire73

Spiders are not my normal subject, but thought I would try to photographing this little guy. (Does anyone know what kind it is? Found on azalea bushes....) Any thoughts on these? The one that looks sort of like an alien was shot with the 24-104 mm lens; the other two with a 60 mm macro lens. This first one has me thinking that one can find beauty in the most unexpected places!

Thinking a bit more about this challenge, I'm not sure whether a spider will strike people as fitting into the "bug" umbrella or not. Hmmm....

Thanks,
Gretchen

1.


2. "Unless you are dinner, leave me alone!"


3. "I'm busy just now."

silversx80

I don't know what kind of spider that is, but I just found the exact same kind on my front porch this morning. In fact, I was going to enter it into the challenge, but you beat me to the punch. I have one angle that may not be too close you what you've captured.

I would say #1. My personal preference would be to lift the shadows and darks, lower the highlights a tad, decrease the picture contrast (but keep local contrast) and offset the crop a little. Basically, that's the long way of me saying there seems to be too much contrast.

That's just me, though. You captured a great pose, have great depth to the shot, and the web really works with the composition. It says "bug" to me!

sapphire73

Joe, what a coincidence! I think this may be a Venusta Orchard Spider, so colorful that it "almost appears to be painted." My son spotted this spider while on a quest to photograph all kinds of bugs and critters for his biology / classroom.

I'll take another run at processing #1. The sun was in front of me when I took these shots, lighting up the web and parts of the spider. I dialed back the exposure a bit even though I was bracketing these shots. It was fun to see your shot of this spider!

Gretchen