A while ago I ripped apart an old CD drive at work, took the little lens out of it and made a crappy little macro lens for my iPhone. Not the greatest piece of glass ever, but it’s fun in a Lomo sort of way. I started the usual way by taking pictures of stuff sitting on the desk and whatnot but things got really interesting when this spider decided to make it’s web on my balcony. An ambitious little bastard, he wanted to have the web span from the balcony above mine all the way down to my railing - a distance of about a metre and a half. I watched, mesmerized as he dropped all the way down on a single strand and then climbed all the way back up only to drop down again on a second strand. A few more times and he had the supporting structure in place and he was able to make the actual web. I’m not sure why he needed to make it so big but perhaps he was tired of eating flies and whatnot and thought a seagull or crow might be tastier. This, I thought, is a great time to get out that nifty macro and see what I can do with it. So I went out there and got my phone reaaaalllly close to it and started taking shots. It was really difficult because, as you can imagine, the depth of field on that lens is about five millimetres and any little gust of wind would push the spider all over the place. Also, the focus distance is about 2 centimetres. I spent the next half hour pushing my phone as close as I would dare to the spider and then frantically pulling it away every time a gust came up and I thought the spider was now on the phone and about to eat my fingers. I mean, come on, look at those fangs. Clearly, this spider could capture and eat a human with ease. Yes, I know, I am tremendously brave. Thank you. Thirty or so shots later I retired to my couch and started messing with the photos. There were about five or six that I really liked but this is my favourite. It looks like it’s attacking me (it was just making it’s web and probably didn’t even know I was there) with it’s legs all splayed out, the focus is just on the right spot and it caught the detail of the joints, hairs and eyes really well. I edited the colours with Mill Colour and added contrast and cropped it with Best Camera.

Comments