Spider Woman

I've been working through several books trying to learn about my new camera. One book interviews a well known photographer and asks what they enjoy most about photography. He or she replied "so I can see what I normally could not see." And it's true! I see hundreds of these tiny, dew covered webs all over my fields every summer morning and have never gotten past the "little red dot" of a spider. Here is one web, all 2 1/4 inches of it:

A closer look at the artist:

Even better, we got a tiny amount of rain the other evening and I grabbed my camera and headed out. I thought I was taking pictures of the droplets of water on a pine branch, but what I actually captured was this tiny, tiny spider, revealed to me only after I had come in and downloaded it to my computer. Revealed to you only if you follow the link to a bigger view. What magic!

I could take hundreds of pictures of my friendly spiders inside and out. I've never questioned my fascination with them. How could you ever really look at a spider's web and not be completely fascinated. While I don't really want them actually crawling across my hand, I'm more than willing to live and let live and watch from afar (or up close with a 200mm lens ;-).

Sometimes you just have to pay attention to see where you fit in the world. As a collector of intricately woven bird nests and an avid spider watcher and protector, it came as no surprise that I felt right at home when I took my first weaving lesson and learned about the real Spider Woman. But, more about her in another post.