We sat close to a very noisy drummer
There were two mascots - #1
and #2
The score at 3 min
A kick
and a push - and so it went for 90 min. Final score: 1-1
Now to today's visit to our spider observatory. Wang Yang is continuing to improve the quality of his curious eyes. At his height, he sees much more than my old eyes catch from 6 ft altitude. Here a curious ant
Wang Yang was busy capturing everything in sight - and most images were not interesting, but this lone drop of dew on a blade of grass caught my attention
Argyrodes flavescens present a great learning opportunity. Their abdomen is highly polished so that, with careful focus, you can clearly see a reflection of the sky. But the technical issues abound - depth of field, motion artifact, focus on the abdomen, and a good balance of light. I have better luck in early morning when the background is dark than later in the day when the sunlight opens up the background
This is a female as you can tell from the palps.
She was walking around manipulating the strands of the Nephila web
Her movement provided lots of different orientations. These were taken with the lens wide open (f/4.5) at 1/125 sec to reduce motion artifact and ISO 400. Using my Tamron 180 mm with a 36 mm extension tube.
When I was watching the Ravenel Bridge construction, I played with the sobel transform - sort of a directional edge enhancer - to create something like a digital sketch. Here is what our little friend looks like after image inversion
and here is what she looks like after the sobel edge detector followed by inversion and altering the gamma a bit
Another try with getting crisp reflections
Here is a juvenile Nephila pilipes. Usually the web is planar, but today there is an interesting curvature to the web and the supporting superstructure
And a primitive digital sketch
A lucky image - showing not only the glue drops on the silk strands but her dragline. Note the silk strand being extruded from her spinnerete
Another view of her dragline silk
Here she is harvesting glue drops as well as manipulating her dragline (note her 4th leg holding the drgaline as its being extruded
Another view
With her 1st legs, she gropes around, pulling strands of the Nephila web toward herself for harvesting
Another view
A different orientation - a bit grainy but illustrating the harvesting strategy using her 1st and 2nd pair of legs
There is a table of silk from the Nephila - and not sure what is going on here
My favorite - Melastomataceae. The colors with a hint of morning dew on the surrounding leaves - is just plain fun
Better composition
C. Frank Starmer