Australian seascape and landscape photography

Art of the Orb – the beauty of nature.

One doesn’t usually associate the word “spider” with art. In my case I seem to be blessed by the presence of a very artsy Orb-weaver spider.
Each evening during summer the spider constructs an elaborate web between the house and a large tree in the backyard.

In an effort to capture the frantic web building activity I took my LX3 out into the backyard to see what I could catch.
The Orb-weaver was lit from some distance away by one of the house security lights.
I set the LX3 to an aperture of f/2.0 @ISO800 due to the dim conditions and caught the following beautiful movements as the spider hurriedly moved around.

orb1 - Orb-weaver spider movement - Jim Worrall

For those who might be curious and want to try this I shot these images in aperture priority mode. The camera selected a corresponding shutter speed of 1.3 seconds to suit my particular lighting conditions. The camera was also in “Dynamic B&W” mode.

orb2 - Orb-weaver spider movement - Jim Worrall

orb3 - Orb-weaver spider movement - Jim Worrall

orb4 - Orb-weaver spider movement - Jim Worrall

orb5 - Orb-weaver spider movement - Jim Worrall

In the final two images there is a bit less movement by the spider and you can start to see the shape of the spider.
orb6 - Orb-weaver spider movement - Jim Worrall

orb7 - Orb-weaver spider movement - Jim Worrall

2 responses

  1. Haunting images…
    Peace to you,

    January 26, 2011 at 12:56 am

  2. Caroline Gorka Photography

    These are ephemeral beauty Jim

    January 26, 2011 at 1:30 am

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