The making of the Dangling Spider

Freshly spurred on by a recent afternoon spent taking pictures of Spiders with other members of our local camera club I wanted to try and take things up a notch.  I had in mind a macro picture of a Spider dangling from a single gossamer thread against an all black backdrop, looking like it had descended at night and was only lit by the moon.

Hmm, ok where to start! I managed to find a Spider that would do the job, one of those fat ones in the garden with a white cross on its back, they seem to make a web almost on demand and with a small stick you an carefully catch the web and lift it, and the Spider into the air.

But how to light it (remember its at night) , how to focus on it (its macro so shallow DOF) and how to freeze it so it is sharp when it will be moving, as may its appendages be.

I came up with a solution, and made a video showing how it was done, its only a couple of minutes long and I hope you like it (literally "like" it :-) ).

One of the resulting images

You can view more images here just search on "spider"

The Photo Trigger was supplied by High Speed Photography UK and the "spare pair of hands" are from Amazon, amazing value at less than £5 each, I use them loads.

Cheers Peter.

Locusts!!!!!!!!

Now the nights have drawn in, the opportunities for photography are reduced.  So, wanting something to do, I purchased a tub of locusts from a local pet shop (that was a strange moment, "what type of reptile do you have?" um...... ).

I invited some friends over and we set up one studio light with softbox, a twig, a co-operative locust and spent the evening trying Macro photography. 

I used a Canon 100mm 2.8 Macro lens I bought earlier this year, but had used more for portraits than macro. 

Its really not that easy to get good results, getting a sharp image is one thing, getting a good composition whilst getting a sharp image is another thing altogether.

Still I enjoyed the effort, and am happy with the results, though can't help feeling there's a killer shot I haven't figured out yet!

Work in progress.

Quick tip, if you try this yourself, you might want to put them in the refrigerator for a few minutes to slow them down a bit.

You can see some more on my photostream Flickr