Is it just my imagination or do the eyes of this spider look like a smiley face to you too?
Eager to use my new macro lens, I went searching yesterday in my neighbors’ garden for subjects and came upon a tiny orange spider, which I have not yet been able to identify.
The spider was initially suspended in midair, but climbed up an invisible silken thread as I approached and took refuge in the shadow of white flower.
I boldly (or foolishly) tried photographing the spider handheld, but the images were blurry. Eventually I put the camera on my tripod and did my best to focus manually. For some shots, I used my pop-up flash to add a bit more light. Of course, it turned the background black, but I think that works for this shot.
In the original shot, the spider was upside down, but I decided it looked better when I rotated the image 180 degrees. I am fascinated with the multiple eyes of spiders. There seem to a lot of different eye patterns in the different species of spider—a macro lens tends to make me look more closely at these kinds of details.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
i wonder why a bug would need so many eyes? I can’t wait to see what comes from that macro lens. They’re fun but as you discovered, they can be tough to use without a tripod sometimes.
The better to see you! Spider eyes are simple eyes with a single lens and, according to info on the web, each pair of eyes is adapted for specific tasks. Different spiders have different numbers of eyes in different patterns. Dragonflies, one of my favorite insects, by contrast, have huge compound eyes, with lots of facets that let them see almost 360 degrees. If eyes are the windows to the soul, I have been looking into the souls of a lot of insects and spiders recently.
That’s stunning.
Now that is one scary smile 😉 Nice shot, Mike!
You got the eyes nicely focused. That manual focusing can be quite a challenge with the ever present fear that something moves.
Must love a good macro lens! I think you’ll find that the tripod should be a constant companion when getting really close, combined with a remote release and a twofold program to lock up the mirror with the first push and make the shot with the second, when all vibrations have stopped. Can’t wait to see more!
It’s always a challenge for me to try to decide when to set up the tripod. I worry that the subject will disappear before I am ready, which has happened sometimes. One of the good things about my new lens is that it will give me macro results from a greater stand-off distance. I have an electronic remote release, but confess to not having used it yet. I’ll look into the manual to see about locking up the mirror-anything to get a bit more sharpness. Hopefully I don’t get so much into macro that I feel I need to get the Canon MP-E lens that will shoot macro at 5X.