Another Photo = Orb Weaver spider by the garden shed

Very nice, I'm impressed. I used to do macrophotography of insects (hobby) in the analog days (with a Pentax SuperA with Pentax 100mm dental macro lens), but what an improvement in quality has been made since!

Thank you , I started with 35mm as well , but I got in just as film prices went up and developing costs rose . And Macro requires a lot of shutter actuations to learn , and in that regard digital is a God send , you can take thousands of photos and there is no film or developing costs , just burn through those shutter actuations till you start getting it right .

And there has never been a better time to get into photography , Prices are coming down on cameras , and there is very little expenditure after the initial cost of the body and lens .

Unfortunately the cost of older lenses is going up as supply begins to become some what short :

That is one extraordinary shot old 4570. I must watch where I walk next time I visit. Its sending shivers down my spine. :open_mouth:

Nice shot. I started out with a Pentax ME-F. Used it for years until the shutter went bad. Good times. I use a Nikon D-200 now. I have a 60mm macro lens for it that works really well.

Orb weavers = Probably one of the more gentle souls in the universe , I know they look nasty but apparently are some what reluctant to bite .

Also not very poisonous to humans , which is a plus .

PS/ This is the small one , have one twice its size over the blue berries :)

Words cannot express how terrifying it is to be a teenager leading a pack of four-wheelers trough the woodland trails and to have 5+ orb weaver webs wrap around your face as you make your way through the winding trail. Slam on the brakes, jump off the atv and frantically try to remove these little crawling monstrosities from one’s stupidly long adolescent hair.

Edit: I’ve now felt crawling on the back of my neck about 15 times since I started typing this.

I slept as a teanager at the back of the shed in a tacked on room. The toilet which was on the back verandah of the house was about 30 meters away and yes every night I had to run the gauntlet in the dark from these very spiders. My flexible shoulder joints to this day is because of trying panickingly getting webs of as quick as you could.

As a teen , one winter I had a huntsman that would climb down the wall to be right in front of my face warming itself on my breath as I slept ..

The first time I woke to find that furball only a few centimetres from my face was a surprise , but for a month or so it would be there when I woke up ...

But when I think about all the places I used to go , Im still amazed nothing bit me ...

Australia?

Yeah I don’t think I can compete with the bug stories y’all have.

Best I’ve got is the house I lived in as a kid was a wolf spider stronghold. I don’t mind spiders as long as they aren’t crawling on me. Anyway, probably twice a week I would get jolted awake by one of these crawly buggers running up my leg or arm. Sometimes sitting on the couch one would crawl up my leg and about make me soil my pants.

Only got bit three times over ~6 years though. I tend to roll around in my sleep so they were likely all a result of that.

I would have had that house fumigated !

Or at least set of 10 or 20 bug bombs !

Crazy thing is, we did!

I remember 3 instances where we bug bombed the whole house. They just kept coming back, or they never left and only became fueled by the toxic fumes! :stuck_out_tongue:

In the latter years the house was professionally termite proofed and that seemed to pretty well destroy the spider population down to seeing one lil crawler crawling up a wall every few months.

Must have had a colony some where with low ventilation ..