I love Spiders(part 1)

I think spiders are awesome.  I am fascinated by them.  I am not currently fascinated to the point where I go and look up what type it is, or if it is poisonous, or what its scientific name is etc..  I just love admiring them.  It is amazing that a little creepy crawly builds a web designed to catch a wayward bug who might get tangled in it.  And once the bug gets caught... game over:) 
Tuesday morning I went outside when the gf left for work.  The air was really foggy(as it often is) and the dense humidity caused the webs to have gazillions of little water droplets on them, making the webs very visible.  On a dry day it can be hard to spot even the largest webs.


The first three images are of the same spider, and were taken near the carport outside our house.  All of the images were taken with the Tokina 100 2.8 Macro lens mounted to a Canon 5d Mark ii.







The web resembled a Compact Disc with the sunlight shinging through the water drops.




A ray of sunlight lights up a spider in the morning




Some nice light coming in from behind a very large web. (Cumberland Knob, N.C.)




A spider just getting his web started on Old Quaker Rd.

 Thanks for looking, stay tuned for more:)

Cumberland Knob Macro Photography

Yesterday I had the whole day off!!(sort of).  I took the gf to work, grabbed the camera, and headed down to the Cumberland Knob in North Carolina.  I made sure to bring my almost functioning Tokina 100mm 2.8 Macro(I got it sandy at the beach and now it won't focus to infinity:(.
 The Cumberland Knob is located just south of the V.A./N.C. line on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  There you will find a large picnic area, a 2.5 mile hiking trail, an awesome little creek at the bottom of a ravine, and TONS of macro opportunities!  I also had the (soon to be replaced) Canon 24mm 2.8, and the Sigma 50mm 1.4.

I like shooting macro for a couple of reasons... One is, the 'Grand Vista' doesn't happen as often in the Southeast as it did back home, so I try to 'focus' on different, smaller things.  The other reason is that I when I look through a macro lens at full magnification, I feel like I can see the backbone of our entire ecosystem, and that is pretty cool.  Enjoy...



Close Focus with the Sigma provides wonderful bokeh




It's difficult to match up the plane of focus with the subject sometimes(notice the blurry edges of the web)




A single strand of webbing crosses in front of a completed web in the background.




The green here is holding on strong, but the yellow is showing its face in spots..






Some TINY mushrooms growing on top of a stump.



This was fun to photograph.  I used live view and the Canon Depth of Field Preview to help me select the perfect focus point and aperture.





I had the pleasure of watching a spider make one of these tightly wound webs.



He hangs in a heart:)

DUN DUN DUN!!!  Fall is coming!!

A colorful leaf(shot with 24mm)

(shot with Sigma 50mm)

A mushroom and a rock sharing some space on the forest floor.

A splash of bright yellow in a dark green forest.

This little photo walk got me super excited for the fall!  But I will take the warm weather as long as it feels like staying:)