Golden Silk

[dadas115]

I saw a few of these ladies out while walking around yesterday. As the weather is starting to cool off their numbers are dwindling and the males have completely disappeared. These pictures don’t capture the golden silk from which the spiders get their name but hopefully they are still interesting. For those who haven’t seen a golden silk spider, they are very large and threatening looking but the spiders are actually pretty docile. I have had no problem picking them up and allowing them to crawl around on my hands. Anyway, in the web-sized images the web doesn’t show up as much as I would have liked it to. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

Greg

[Lava Lamp]

I saw a few of these ladies out while walking around yesterday. As the weather is starting to cool off their numbers are dwindling and the males have completely disappeared. These pictures don’t capture the golden silk from which the spiders get their name but hopefully they are still interesting. For those who haven’t seen a golden silk spider, they are very large and threatening looking but the spiders are actually pretty docile. I have had no problem picking them up and allowing them to crawl around on my hands. Anyway, in the web-sized images the web doesn’t show up as much as I would have liked it to. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

Greg

I like these, although they could be sharper and could use more context. I've tried to get shots of these spiders with dragonflies and bees and such in their web, but haven't gotten one I liked yet. Maybe you could create two layers in PS and adjust the web to your liking?

Re: their docility. I run into these often and have occasionally run into one of their webs on a hike and gotten one on me without a bite, but I've never tried to pick one up. It seems to me that May is the peak season. How do you tell the males and females apart? Size?

[dadas115]

There is a very significant size difference between the males and females. It seems like the females eat the males after mating. Usually in the beginning of the summer you will see that all the webs have a large (female) spider and a small (male) spider in them. I have noticed that once the egg sacs start showing up the male spiders start disappearing. Usually it isn’t difficult to find some chewed up male spiders in/around the webs at this point. I have handled these spiders quite a bit without incident though I have been told that when they do bite it is very mild (less pain than a honey bee sting).

As far as the sharpness, I guess a lot is lost when scaling down to this resolution as the web and sharpness shoes up quite well in prints and when viewed at full resolution. I am a bit curious as to what type of display you are using?

Thanks,

Greg

[Iguanamom]

Oh look at these beauties! I love spiders and these are some impressive examples.

They look a little soft on my monitor as well, and it looks like it's lack of DOF (it appears that your lens is wide open) not bad focussing or display issues. Maybe you could try a flash and stop the lens down so that all of the spider's parts are in focus. Maybe faster film if a flash is out of the question. Sometimes though, these girls spook and won't pose for you again! : ( Maybe you can bribe them with flies.

[dadas115]

What is it exactly that you think is out of the DOF? Very interesting that you think that as there is plenty of detail in the body and out on the leg hairs in the full sized images. Again, out of curiosity, are you using a CRT?

Here is one where the DOF is indeed less but I still like it a lot and would not change the DOF.

Thanks for another thoughtful comment.

Greg

[Iguanamom]

OOOHHH that one is very striking. I'm home now with a different monitor, and the first post looks less soft than it did from work. Also, now that I think about it, the fuzziness could be precisely that - fuzziness in the dark areas of the legs. On the other monitor, the very top of the body and the head seem soft, but here they seem sharper. Very nice work.

[afina]

The last one is my fav! Awesome colours and position.
I am really scared of spiders, so I don't get close enough to take pictures