I love Spiders (Part 2)

I opted to set up a flash behind my subject here.  I like how all the water drops catch light and make a really nice line throughout the image.  If you look closely, you can see little starbursts on the points of light(notably the larger drop right infront of the spider on the first image).  The aperture was closed down to f14 for these images.  A small aperture is usually a nessecity for macro photography, as a razor thin depth of field is very hard to work with.

Click the images to view a larger version.

Thanks for Looking:)

 Thanks for looking:)





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:)

Front Stoop Macro Photography

I had most of the day off yesterday, and while the dog was doing her 'numbers', I opted to take some photos of the slowly wilting flowery plants in the front yard.  After first seeing the spiders and the bees, the next 400 exposures were a bit of a blur.... :) 

1:1(maximum magnification on the Tokina 100mm Macro) photography is difficult on a moving subject.  It is made even more difficult when you are leaning over in odd stances.   Your depth of field(the part of the image that is in focus) is razor thin at f2.8, almost unusable this close.  If you stop your aperture down to f10 or so, you have a few milimeters of focused area to work with.

I did not use my lens' focus for the bee pictures below, I set the lens to its closest possible focus point, and just moved the camera back and forth inch by inch to get the focus right.  Then, when I was done, I deleted about 300 some exposures:)




Most of the flowers here have started to get depressed and look like this.

 Once I noticed the spiders I knew I was gonna be photographing for a while..



A spider scurries into a flower



I have always thought that Yellowjackets looked awesome.  But these are a different kind that have a shiny green back and stripped bottom half.   They are sweet looking and the Tokina brings out the detail very well.