Midnight photos of a web

I was out at midnight, taking photos of the nocturnal activity just outside my door (more on that later) and wasted a few shots on a spider web. The web caught the light from the flash and played games with it.

Here's one shot. I had inadvertently broken the web, chasing an earwig. The bright object in the centre is a tiny cross spider. Very tiny. The strands of spider silk look like square glass rods; at full size (click on the photo), they look solid, not like a spider web at all. If I play with the brightness settings, the colour changes; when I dim it, for example, upright rods go green, the ones forming a tipped floor look red.

And I have no idea how I ended up with those pentagonal dots.


Without the flash, using only the light from my lamp a few feet away, the spider can be seen, holding tightly to the fragments of his tattered web. I went out again half an hour later; he was busily repairing the damage.


This is the spider, in daylight, yesterday, before that great bumbling klutz swung a camera strap through his home.

Araneus diadematus, about 1/4 inch, toe to toe.

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