This summer I haven’t been seeing any of the large orb-weaver spiders at my local marsh that I observed in previous years, but the small spiders can be equally beautiful.
I spotted this little spider when I was hiking through the woods. There wasn’t really enough room to set up my tripod, so I ended up taking the shot handheld with the available light, which meant my depth of field was pretty limited. Although my normal instinct is to move in really close, I decided to take some shots from a slight distance and I like one of the resulting images so much that I am presenting it with almost no cropping (which is unusual for my insect shots). I especially like the interplay of light and shadows on the different elements in the scene, which together produce a sense of drama.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Really nice shot, you may have noticed ,I am a big fan of spiders and Orb weavers are pretty high up my list 🙂
Nice shot, many of my shots don’t have much depth of field but because on long hikes the tripod usually stays home.
I agree with you on the quality of this more ‘distant’ view, especially the great detail on the legs in foreground.
Well done, Mike, and to modify a line from my favorite Mel Brooks film, “Tripods? We don’t need no stinking tripods!”
Superb! 🙂
Thanks, Ed. I figured you might like my spider shots. (Folks tend to like them a lot or are totally creeped out by them.)
I like the pattern on its body. Nice shot!
Thanks. Too often I ignore the smaller spiders–there is a lot of detail when you look really closely at them.
I’m not a spider fan but he is lovely, his (or maybe it’s a her) body is like a mosaic.