It's spider time again

End of summer, beginning of autumn, Photography Month in South Dakota, and spider time - all coinciding right now. I've seen lots of big spiders lately working on their last meals before the coming colder weather.

These two have set up their insect-trapping webs in the shrubs outside my office in Pierre. When I spotted them I just had to get out the 60mm macro and move in as close as I could. ISO 200, f16, 1/60 or 1/125, flash on TTL -1.



You can travel to some fun locations looking for these guys like South Dakota's numerous state and national parks, but I'm guessing you could also find some not too far from home.

I worked handheld on these shots, very gently creeping up to get the spiders as big as possible in the frame. They flinched from the flash at first, but then were pretty cooperative until I moved close enough to touch the web. That puts them on alert and they either curl up in a protective ball or start heading for the site of the disturbance.