There I am at my computer, doing a little typing, doing a little surfing, when something in the corner of my eye catches my attention.

"There's a spider in my room!"

Old, cameraless me would be like, "Oh eww. Get that out of here!"

New PhotoGerry thought, "Oh! Ooo! Stay right there!"

I pull out my camera, and 186 shots later, there are a couple pics that I'm happy with for a first time attempt with a spider client.

One thing I learned. Spiders aren't the craziest about having their photos taken. As soon as I stood up, he stopped lowering himself. And over the course of several minutes (it felt like fifteen or twenty, but it as likely somewhere between five to ten minutes), we went through a cycle of:

He lowers to do what he wants to do.
I stick out a piece of paper beneath him and blow air up at him.
He freezes for some photos before scrambling back up his thread.
Repeat.

This first pic is the best action pic I was able to take. Out of the nearly two attempts, perhaps five percent of them had him doing something more than just staying frozen in place while rotating on this thread.

My room isn't the brightest of places, so I took the lamp by my desk and aimed it up at him, likely making him even more self-conscious of the camera. It was time for him to power up in to a Super-Spider to intimidate me into backing off.

That or I was having trouble focusing on the spider most of the time, but with such a bright light on him and a slowish shutter speed, this gives me a taste of what it will be like to experiment with light painting. (I can't wait to try that!)

While I initially thought all these pics were a waste, it has an interesting enough look when put in sequence like this. I could probably make this more interesting with some tweaks in Lightroom, however it will be another week or two before I go and buy my way into qualifying for the Adobe Photoshop + Lightroom photography bundle. Until then, since my 14-day trial period is over, I'll have to make due with what my camera can produce. (And a little sharpness assistance from Squarespace. I forgot that Squarespace could do more than just crop until right just now.)

And here we are at the end of the shoot. He was comfortable with me, I was comfortable with him, and I was able to capture the majesty in his little body.

Another difficultly in a surprise visit from a spider in my room is that it is hard to find anything in background other than blank wall or ceiling. Here's one of the few shots with the bookshelf in the background giving a little something to the image.

This was all done with my kit lens, but it makes me wonder how these pics would have turned out if I had a macro lens.

What exactly is the "macro" in a macro lens? I'm not quite sure, I just know I have an interest in macro photography. Right now I'm thinking of going all out and picking up the 100mm f/2.8L Macro lens. I'm going to go all out. (Or perhaps, the smart thing to pick this lens as my first lens to rent before I actually buy it.) Whether I rent first or just straight out buy it, it will be interesting to look back at these pics after I have some experience with a lens dedicated to macro photography.