Come Join Me in My Parlor Photo

Photographer’s Note

This is not a true macro shot. It was taken about 18 inches from this big lady. She was about 5-6 inches across. She is a small example of this species of spider. A friend of mine told me that he had seen a large one feeding on a small bird a few years back. Not sure if that is true or not, but these arachnids can get as big as a foot from tip to tip. I used 50% opacity diffuse followed by a sharpen more at full resolution and a 60% opacity sharpen once the image was reduced to lessen the DOF blur on portions of the spiders legs. The web was at an angle and I had about 1.5 inches of DOF to work with. Let me know what you think.

Paulo_Cohen, fkostas has marked this note useful

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Paulo_Cohen (354) 2006-01-24 7:41

Hello Hubert
Great shoy - very good detail
Regards

Paulo

clarkzor (374) 2006-01-24 8:15

Hi Hubert!

Haha, I don't got so much to say about this photographically other than good detail and good colors. The biggest achievement from my view is that you were so close to that moth********. I wouldn't go anyplace near that thing:P

Regards,

Daniel

fkostas (444) 2009-01-28 19:37

Hi Hubert,

You have the southern banana spider there, aka golden silk spider. You illustrated very well why she is called the golden silk spider-The golden web-Also the strongest spider silk of all. Her puny mate is just visible at the top left.

This spider simply sits in her web all day waiting for prey, which would never include birds. The hunters such as Tarantulas may go after small birds. I've never seen one near a foot, even in the Everglades. They are beautiful, though. I have a few shots myself, but not as good as this. You can get within an inch of them. They are very patient and definitely not agressive.

Farah