So there I was, simultaneously doing admin and writing tweets about the upcoming Saltaire Brewery beer festival when Sarah brought my attention to the massive spider that had just run across the living room carpet. I believe that my response should have been along the lines of, “don’t worry, I’ll put him outside”, but being the person I am, I jumped up, found a bright light and my extension tubes, and set about photographing this beautiful model for 10 minutes.
The extension tubes give a ridiculously shallow depth of field and it is very difficult to focus with them attached, so it was a lengthy shoot to get some images that were worthwhile keeping. I love the one of his hairy leg, but the three of the whole spider are brilliant too.
I’ve not had to do much post processing. The images are a little noisy because despite the bright light shining only a few centimetres from him, the extension tubes are light hungry and I had to use a high ISO (400 on some, 200 on this one). I corrected the white balance and sharpened them ever so slightly. I am really pleased with the outcome. My first attempt at macro wildlife photography!
By the time I’d processed them, Incy was long gone. Sarah would still have preferred me to have put him outside!
See the other images in the Spider set on Flickr.
Great result.
Mr. impeus has been taking lots of photos of spiders recently. How did you stop it escaping? He’s been told that you can freeze them to slow them down long enough to take photos, but we haven’t caught one since.
I didn’t need to stop it escaping, it just sat there on the carpet for ages. It didn’t seem to mind having the light bulb right above it for five minutes. Never tried freezing one – sounds a bit cruel!?
©2010 Michael Scott
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