Along Came a Spider

Okay well really I was the one that came along and discovered this big spider in its web just outside the stairwell of my apartment. First time I have seen one this big hanging around. He/she was very cooperative in allowing me to get pretty close with my 100mm Macro lens.

My subject was not in the ideal location background wise. From the angle I shot at above I had to deal with the road and one of the apartment buildings had. Had the spider been hanging out on the other side of the web I would have easily had a beautiful green background of foliage to blur out.

I used my tripod, set the camera on timer and locked up the mirror to get the sharpest shots I could. I experimented with various setting with f-stops generally ranging from 2.8-8.0 I found being this close with this lens I still got a decent blur to the background while getting most of the spider pretty sharp.



In order to get some green in the background I had go higher and aim down, here you are seeing part the green underbrush I had to keep untangling the tripod legs from and the road.
Too bad a fly didn't come by to provide me with some interesting if creep action shots!
Stephanie