I found this little (again - in the 5mm or smaller size range) spider on my way home from work on Friday. I brought him home and moved him to a slightly larger container. He quickly decided it was time to take a nap, and make a small cocoon type web on the lid of the container and curled up to get some rest.

Later, when I went to take some photos, I thought it would be nice to get him still in the little blanket of silk. Unfortunately, he quickly woke up and was just climing out of his little hammock when I managed to fire off this one shot.

I really like this pose as it is different from what you would normally see for a spider. I'm a bit disappointed that the very top of the spider's head got cut off by the top of the frame. Also, the depth of field is pretty shallow (f/8 as opposed to the f/16 I usually shoot with this lens), and from this profile angle makes very little of the spider in focus. I also really like the blue background, and may have to try and use it more often and find some others that work well too. On top of that, this shot is at 5x magnification, so all things considered, I am pretty pleased with it.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/40 sec at f/8. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

I have a few more to share of this spider, but I promise to take a short break from the spiders here and post a few I took at Powdermill Nature Reserve.

- Bill