Note: I will be displaying/selling much of my artwork (framed and unframed prints, nature note cards, nature magnets, post cards) at the Lee’s Summit Art Festival on Friday, October 10 thru Sunday, October 12 (see details HERE and scroll down the page). With a hectic schedule, and working around potential heavy thunderstorms to set up the booth on Friday, I likely won’t be on social media until later Sunday or Monday. In my absence from social media, I will be scheduling a few favorite, past posts. I’ll try to post in the early morning to social media, but if you go to my blog on my website, www.showmenaturephotography.com ,you won’t miss a thing while I’m busy showing my work!
Today’s post comes from the local prairie, when I hiked it last week. As I left the upper meadow and headed for the wooded trail that takes me back to the parking lot, I ran across this Orb Spider who was sitting still on his web that was stretched from the orb web to a nearby sapling. As I approached, he climbed to the nearby limb that was holding his web, then sat quietly. With him being quite close and cooperative of me being so close (often, spiders will scurry away, running up their web support into a nearby tree) I decided he would make a nice focus-stacked image, allowing me to capture nearly all of his body in sharp focus, while keeping the background well out-of-focus. Here is the result of combining 10 images (of varying focusing points) into one image, via Helicon Focus software:
As far as identification, I believe this is an Arboreal Orb Weaver, but I couldn’t see his head well enough to get a positive ID.
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark 3 body
- Canon EF180mm, f/3.5 macro lens
- Bogen 3221 tripod with Graff Studioball SB-QR ballhead
- ISO 200
- Aperture f/11
- Shutter 1/80 sec.
- Shot 10 images, varying the focusing point, then combined into a single, focus-stacked image using Helicon Focus software