So we're closing in on the end of the available photos from this crab spider. Towards the end of the shoot, this little guy definitely let me know he was getting tired of me.

That is definitely something you need to be conscientious of when working with any kind of wildlife photography. Your subject will definitely let you know when you need to back off. Ideally, you want to be done with your photos well before that time comes - both for the health of your subject as well as for the natural behavior to be captured in your images.

It is a little tougher to identify those warning signals with small insects and spiders. This is definitely one, though.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Tamron 180mm f/3.5 Di SP LD 1:1 Macro with Kenko Teleplus PRO 300 "DG" AF 2x Teleconverter for effective 360mm with 68mm in extension tubes. 1/2 sec at f/9.1 and exposure compensation +1/3 stop. ISO 200. No post production.

Why This Photo: I was just working the subject as much as I could before having to pack it in. At this point, almost any motion caused him to rear up and posture aggressively (earlier in the shoot, it took dramatic motions or very loud noises like my dog barking). At this point, he was charging to the edge of the flower and waving his front limbs around like crazy. I had him framed and set for what I thought would be a great shot, and as I pressed the shutter release and started the timer, he waves his limbs around again, and I just had to get whatever posture he ended up in when the timer ended.

What Works: Focus is sharp, and I like the overall exposure. I like how the edge of the flower was visible in this shot - so many of the shots in this set were so zoomed in that it wasn't always apparent that this was on a flower.

What Doesn't Work: The original framing had all parts of the spider inside the shot, but after he decided to flail about wildly, that wasn't the case for the final shot. I could have not framed the original shot so tightly, but then I would be sacrificing some of the magnification.

One other thing I was going for with this shot was to capture the nice greenish color on the abdomen of the spider. It really was very beautiful. You can catch a hint of it here, but unfortunately, I don't think I did such a good job of capturing that. I didn't manage to get it in any of the photos in this set.

What do you think?

- Bill