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Comments & ID Thoughts
Araneus guttulatus (guttulatus)
This is a better lit shot of the spider I photographed in picture 161570. This is after relocation to the garden, where it will find plenty to eat.
- Submitted by:
- Submitted: Aug 14, 2022
- Photographed: Aug 13, 2022
- Spider: Unidentified
- Location: Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, United States
- Spotted Outdoors: Garage or shed
- Found in web?: No
- Attributes:
This is decent for closeup. lighting and focus could be better. Small life and spiders can be tricky, I often take several shots from a few perspectives. then I work with the best of the lot. Frontal view showing eye patterns and mouth parts, full dorsal showing habitus and patterns. leg segments and claws. rear shot showing spinnerets, Ventral shots showing the sternum, book lungs, and epigynum. lateral shots and such.
Such shots show keys to identification.
As for fears, you have no need to fear any arthropod even in the slightest.
That all comes with experience.
Yeah, it was dusk in a shady area hand held. I didn’t want to risk losing him while I assembled my platypus. I was trying to hold a DSLR with a 100mm macro lens steady hunched over at an odd angle. I didn’t want to drop the aperture to f2 because then we would just see a tiny section in focus. Since it is a Canon DSLR I didn’t want to take iso over 1600. We want to see a spider, not a TV with poltergeist. So it was a hand held 1/25 shot. I have one other I got… Read more »
Well, photography is not my expertise, but I can do OK sometimes. One of my best macros was one shot of a family of assassin bugs using a 35MM lens in front of a Samsung phone. Years back, I had a Nikon S70 and used mostly for astrophotography.
That camera was stolen and never replaced.
assassin_bugs | Family Reduviidae adults,nymphs taken with S… | Flickr
Another with my little Nikon turned out better than expected. Hand feeding paper wasps.
Northern paper wasp | Polistes fuscatus species taken with N… | Flickr
Oops, Nikon Z-5 stolen 2012.
A brave man holds a paper wasp. I have a lot of insects on my website. I tend to not want to touch them though.
It’s not about brave, I learned how to live with them and not set them off.
Makes my day when I can get a bumblebee to drink a spot of honey from my hand.
I hold a flashlight with my mouth for spotlighting bugs for photos and really hope that no one sees me doing this. A friend broke my “real camera” and I didn’t replace it. I bought my Google Pixel cellphone for its cameras. We have a photo on the site that is excellent and taken with a cellphone through a lens of binoculars.
Check out Lumicubes, they’re a game changer. You can step it up with a platypod with goose necks. For insects/arachnids you have to be ready though.
Nice lighting, I have similar. Hard part is gettng that “Kodak moment”
Thanks, I will. I keep experimenting with arthropod and plant photography and keep discovering new tricks. I have a variety of solar lights on stakes in the yard. I can grab one and stick in the soil near a bug’s location as emergency supplemental lighting. I’ll check out Lumicubes right now.
These new phones and tablets have some good cameras. I have an Apple Ipad that takes better photos than my little Nikon. Only reason I may keep it.
Here is a very young Araneus marmoreus collected from a tree with dispersing spiderlings.
The camera was a cheap point and shoot.
Tiny orb weaver | CF Araneus marmoreus A tiny marbled orb we… | Flickr