Whoops...
that spider was supposed to go in here for seamaiden... since she gets off on spiders so much... and since she said that my photo was better than Gryph's...
I do love spiders. A hell of a lot better than "meat bees" and "hornets" and "yellow jackets" and flies. The "walk" thing... ok, I can wrap my head around the fascination factor. How common are they? Walk!
Cuz it doesn't fly, does it?
This is a wheel weaver... not dangerous at all. They do make beautiful webs though... the wheel weavers are a part of the master weaver genus... called that because of the perfect symmetry of their webs.
View attachment 176842
Agh, it's too tiny, doesn't size up when I click on it.
Seamaiden... what kind of camera do you have? I/we can do a little research for you and we might be able to give you some hints on how to use it properly if you like. I like manually focusing, but I like to take shots from differing perspectives too, and I like the freedom to focus on anything I choose, rather than let the camera decide. It sounds like you have a multi-focus thingy on your camera (which gives you choices), but I still like manual. Then again, maybe it's just the twisting motion that I like.
I don't use the manual setting so much on cameras with fixed lenses... it's just not the same.
The camera I'm currently playing with is (my husband's) Canon Rebel... and I'm drawing a complete blank on the model. It's a DSLR (der), can't remember what megapixel it's got, and I'm POSITIVE he lost the fucking hardcopy manual! Whenever I ask him for it he says, "It's on the server." Well, gee, dear, what if neither of my computers are fired up? What if I'm, you know, NOT HOME? Like out on my bike or something like that. What THEN? He misplaces these things all the time, and if he'd just hand them over to me then I'd put them in my file. It's disorganized, and I always have to paw through a whole bunch of papers, but if I need the manual to the steam vacuum, do you think I can find it? Of course I can! Why? Because, the manual is IN THE FILE.
So.. what's my point? I'm not printing out 400+ pages (one-sided unless I futz with the printer) of a manual that I
know we got when he bought the thing. Along with the two lenses (one short, one long, my father would cringe if he saw how I describe them, he raised me better than this), and lens covers for each, and... an extra battery, and a small card and some other stuff I can't remember anymore. I keep leaving the camera outside, give me a moment
(insert your music of choice here) to go bring it inside and tell you exactly what it says (and since I'm on my computer, I'll go ahead and open up that manual pdf).
So, the LENS is a 70-210mm Canon Zoom Lens. The setting at the top left of the lens (as it's mounted on the camera) has a forward/back switch, with three settings:
MACRO--(infinity symbol)
-------] AF <---- (these two are bracketed, as auto-focus)
1.5m--(infinity symbol)
M
Right, so... on the end of the lens there's also this little window with numbers (ft/m) that I'd like to know how to manipulate. Honestly, I haven't even cracked open the manual to look up the features on this lens.
As long as that's all you're playing with... 
... and sometimes that's a horrible, horrible thing.
They're beautiful, you did them using low light? Were you feeding the Tubastrea?
