Skin Crawlers

This post is dedicated to the Spiders and contains a set of Macro photographs of Spiders I have captured (with my lenses) in different places. I don't know the species of many of them as there are so many and an Arachnidologist, I am not. Any help in identifying them is always appreciated. A Nikon 105mm Macro lens took the majority of these images handheld.

This curious little spider (species unknown) Epping Forest has an unusual strategy. It sits on the end of a leaf with arms outstretched waiting to cuddle passing flies. I'm assuming it's quite a decent ploy as flies being quite dim would probably see the legs as a convenient perch to rest upon, not realising that it's probably their last ever sit down 1/100th @f8 ISO 400 / 105mm Macro

Evolution

Spiders are the distant cousins of the first crustaceans who walked straight out of the sea to conquer the land many millions of years ago when the pickings were slim. Since the dawn of time, they've been refining their skill set with varying strategies. They took up hunting and became the hunted in a multi-species game of cat & mouse. Often a tasty prey for birds, there are spiders who routinely eat birds in turn. I personally love the tiny Zebra jumping spiders which live among the cacti on my windowsill. They are cute with big glassy eyes, 4 pairs in total and are naturally curious, dextrous free runners of the highest calibre and very good hunters.

This odd looking tiny spider is another I've never seen before (Epping Forest again) this time near a pond, recycling it's tatty web in the late afternoon sun is a prime example of waste not want not 1/125th @f8 ISO 125 / 105mm Macro

Tiny Spider (London Fields) does a tight rope walk - more slacklining actually) from branch to branch 1/60th @ no f. number recorded (manual lens) 300mm x2 factor brand adapter ISO 200

Hunters

Known for their weaving talents with super strong silk some got bored just sitting around and have turned their back on webs altogether becoming active hunting spiders. These are the ones which give us humans the willys and although the scarily named Wolf Spider which you can hear running across the floor in the UK looks pretty frightening, it's no Black Widow and is infinitely more afraid of you. Similarly the Huntsman Spiders so common in Australian homes, may look and act very aggressive, being the size of your dad's outstretched hand.. they're harmless. It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for

A rather exotic and very small spider (again from Epping Forest) and unknown to me with very long front hunting / feeler legs and a bright yellow and black abdomen. Also notice oversized red palps, A true mini-monster. 1/125th @ f5.6 ISO 320 / 105mm Macro

Another small hunting spider lies in wait. (Epping Forest), hiding underneath a nettle leaf waiting to shout surprise when an unwitting insect causes vibrations and it can come out at full speed rushing the prey in a flurry of legs and jaws 1/125th @f8 ISO 400 / 105mm Macro

Inbuilt fear

Some psychologists have ventured that we are genetically afraid of spiders from our ancestral past in the forest where a spider bite may have been a death sentence. There are species which can give lethal bites to people and some carry necrotic bacteria from the soil which infect horrid sores to their victims skin, rotting them slowly.

Common garden spider rebuilding her web after a good weeks fishing. I say her as the females are a lot bigger and rounder than the slinky males - (see next photo) I've got to know Garden Spiders over the years and they come in all different colours from blonde to ginger to dark brown & chocolate. They're generally quite placid to the point where you could stroke them and unlike many spiders have an attractive suede like coat, making them appear and feel quite nice. 1/200th @f6.3 ISO 100 / 42mm kit zoom lens

Here a male garden spider woos a female by gently plucking the strings of her guitar with a love sonnet.. He has to be very careful and not play out of tune or progress too fast, lest he becomes lunch. It's a strategy employed by other female insects such as the Mantid. Once he's played his part he's often prone to cannibalism. In this little Spiders case, he may not get that far. Actually I did watch this and it went gingerly on for quite a while advancing inch by inch. Let's just say he lived to see the brood - next picture 1/30th f@ .54 ISO 400 / 37mm kit zoom lens

Spider Brood

He was successful and here are the kids. In the spring you'll often see a ball of tiny spiders clinging on to each other somewhere in a corner of the garden or even inside the house or shed. If you gently blow on them, they will disassemble on tiny lines like some weirdly organic transformer before slowly gathering themselves up again over time. Then a day or two later they will disperse across the garden. Those that find a good place to build a web progress quickly and over the summer you can watch them grow and grow until they are quite enormous with massive webs strung on guide lines up to a couple of metres apart. Think about it. that's 2 metres of carrying a line of silk and then pulling it in like a mountain climber.. then repeating the process until a web is secured.*

A ball of tiny Garden spiderlets a few millimetres across, just before they disperse across the garden to make lives of their own. Each ball can contain hundreds of spider babies from the same brood. Many of them can survive and I've counted up to 30-40 webs in the same garden, although not all guaranteed to be from the same brood, many brothers and sisters can be living side by side all summer long 1/40th @ no f.number recorded ISO 200

In Death Preserved - My Dead Insect Ultra Macro Project

Although it's completely another post and one of my art photography projects I've been collecting and photographing a growing collection of dead insects for about 6 years now. Spiders have a special guest inclusion in the collection as they are not actually insects but many of the insects are actually a dead exoskeleton case after a spider has sucked them dry, they're in the photos showing the relationship of prey to predator.. All dead. They sit very still which is quite a bonus for macro photography. The project is about death, bodies and how intricate insects are which we don't usually appreciate. Photographing their incredible structures reveals to me super creatures, very well adapted to their environment. They've only been around for about 400 hundred million years, a little bit older and perhaps more evolved in some ways than ourselves.
Here's a sample photo of a dead spider.

Hollow and transparent, the empty exoskeleton of a dead spider's legs with insects it may have eaten 1/60th @no f.number recorded (manual lens) ISO 250 / 300mm x 2 factor = 600mm (basically a microscope length

Super Macro close-up of the same dead spider leg with a piece of cotton fibre wrapped around it bet you didn't know how hairy they were.. very useful for feeling passing vibrations. 1/250th @ no f.number recorded (manual lens) ISO 250 / 300mm x 2 factor = 600mm (basically a microscope length)

The Spider's web

Nature's Jewels dewdrops in the afternoon down among the undergrowth turn a spiders web into a piece of jewelled fabric. The water vapour condenses along the tiny joints (knots) in the web 1/125th @ f5.6 ISO 640 / 42mm zoom kit lens

The power of the web.. not the internet ! This spider hit the JACKPOT as a cloud of midges flew straight through it's web at the edge of the Olympic Park A12 1/200th @f7.1 ISO 100 / 18mm kit zoom lens

Spiders in My Art

I have many spiders in my art. Photo-stencils create opportunity for using spider forms in my print work. here's a couple of examples of how photos of spiders can transform into other ideas about them including themes of fear and making them appear more friendly.

Wolf Spider I found in my bathroom. I imagined if Spiders made nests instead of webs (some do) they'd be a bit more friendly looking. This images contains scans of leaves against a banana leaf backdrop

Photo stencil images of Insects collaborating to contain a spider fondly titled The Ugly Bugs Ball

Photograph of a stencil spider walking along the edge of the wall. Broadway Market / Dericote Street. Artist Unknown
1/80th @f6 ISO 160 / 42mm kit zoom lens

THE END

All images copyright Christos BUG Hatjoullis (Outerground)