Mama With Attitude: Don't Mess With The Nest

[JBW]

ISO 100 ~ Shutter Speed Six Seconds ~ F/16 ~ Natural Light

[Geoff F]

Spiders are always difficult subjects so this works well.

[charzes44]

ISO 100 ~ Shutter Speed Six Seconds ~ F/16 ~ Natural Light

Brian, I don't know how you manage to sleep at night! Excellent photo. What distance are you working at for this kind of subject?

[Dave Humphries]

That has to be one of the best head on shots showing all the eyes I have seen Brian, well done.

So it seems she has four eyes to aid wrapping captured prey and/or eating it, two for 'look out' duty and another pair straight ahead to see where she's going. Fascinating.

Cheers,
Dave

[Shadowman]

Nice shot.

[JBW]

Spiders are always difficult subjects so this works well.

I really struggled with crop. Hopefully she will be around for a while so I'll go back and try some macro from a little lower and see what happens.

[JBW]

Brian, I don't know how you manage to sleep at night! Excellent photo. What distance are you working at for this kind of subject?

I have developed the ability to not worry about what might be under our bed. The Tamron 90mm 272E extends for focusing. With it fully extended at 1x1 to 1x1.1 mag the back of my camera is about 9 inches away from the subject while the lens is about 4 inches away.

I have shot this species quite often with my Sony Alpha a58. The excellence of this shot is in large part due to my moving upscale to the a68.

[JBW]

Nice shot.

a highly talented model

[JBW]

That has to be one of the best head on shots showing all the eyes I have seen Brian, well done.

So it seems she has four eyes to aid wrapping captured prey and/or eating it, two for 'look out' duty and another pair straight ahead to see where she's going. Fascinating.

Cheers,
Dave

The a68 has really allowed me to take it to the next level. Have you noticed that you can see through the clear outer part of the large eye at the rear?

Now you have raised my curiosity I'm going to try to find out how spiders use their eyes. No one seems to really know what they see. But here s a video showing how a spider controls their large eyes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvN_ex95IcE

[Dave Humphries]

Fascinating video (thanks) and interesting, following a couple of others linked from there that the Jumping Spiders have the bigger pair as the Forward Facing ones, unlike your Tree spider.

[JBW]

Fascinating video (thanks) and interesting, following a couple of others linked from there that the Jumping Spiders have the bigger pair as the Forward Facing ones, unlike your Tree spider.

Spiders are curious creatures. I went out yesterday and shot her again from a different angle. Maybe not quite as good a shot but i found i had my reflection in 6 out of 8 eyes.