This moth came to my light last night. Here are several shots of it, including the above super closeup of it's head I managed to get. Unfortunately there was not enough available light to go into extreme macro here.

More Cats-

Another shot of the cats that sometimes make my photography difficult. This shot was taken in very low light and had to be brought back with Photoshop but those eye reflections are straight
up real! I brought up the whole picture--I did not mess with the eyes.

The Dalles, Oregon-

This is my "pet Jumper", she's in so many shots on my web site I lost track. I identified her. Her scientific name is Phildippus audax. I used size, proportions and markings to ID her from one my my field guides. She's not a caged "pet"--she lives outside next to my light in a hole she lined with silk. I've been photographing and watching her nearly every night for a month or more now and even sold a picture of her (full sized). I've not yet put it up. but all pictures on this site are potentially for sale (in there full sized version)--to obtain the full sized version and about sales--e-mail me.

Below is a spider that I caught running on my wall. I just saw it on the internet a couple of weeks ago!! I forgot it's scientific name. It's one of the first pictures I took with a bunch of gear for my 35mm Pentax SLR. Extension tubes and a macro lens. The whole outfit works well but it takes practice to get right. The gear for my Pentax has super-macro abilities almost as high as my digital stuff with the right lens combos. All pro stuff in great shape. I've got to try it out. I do mostly digital but never forgot 35mm or 120 film and still will use it. The biggest trick is the scanner I've got a lot to learn about that. I will mark 35mm pictures every time I put them up.





I recently took this picture from my Grandma's. You can see the Columbia river on the right and the entire town down below. My house is just to the left a bit up in mid-picture up the hill. The view and photo-opportunities are great but meeting people is a bit hard.


A daddy longlegs -(the insect type) in a jar. That bright light bulb covered in aluminum foil makes a quick easy light for 35mm or digital photography without a flash. But you gotta keep it cool--use under 40w or a floodlight that does not get too hot. A lamp now replaces that stuff now and I can take great 35mm pictures with no flash and test all that Pentax gear I got. I'm excited about what this stuff can do. Its the "the big bug gun" of my gear with up to a foot long lens combo wich has all kinds of macro Possibilities. My new digital cameras can almost certainly do much higher macros, at higher then 35mm res., but this is a challenge I want to take on. This stuff is typical pro-gear standard stuff for spider macro shots as instructed in one of my books from the 1980s--how to do it. Some pros even still do things this way today. The photo club here still has a lot of slide photography. That's another field I want to learn at least the basics about. I want to learn all the techniques and technologies of photography I can. The hint of sepia in this picture is a natural effect of high speed film (400-800+) when used in low light. The effect happens with digital cameras as well but you can fix it with your white-balance control.
(if your camera has one and you know how to use it- most do)

My "pet jumper" is gonna have spiderlings !

She's big enough to have tackled this earwig and was working on it while I was photographing her.

I am particularly proud of these shots because they were done with my newly constructed macro lens that in it's new configuration can be used for shots up to about f 20 (only f 8 used here) and moves with the in camera zoom matched mechanical allowing for "macro-zoom".

The most fascinating thing was, she seemed confused about how much to trust me. Sometimes even approached my camera--left her pray and walked more then 5 inches away from it to the beginning of my roof. Then she turned around and came back down to claim her long dead pray again! I also was using my Pentax 35mm SLR, I just used a 49 mm lens down to f5.6 (ISO 400 film film) to photograph her doing this. When I develop the pictures I may post one of them, I can't remember if I had my macro extension tubes on that lens or not. They show in sequence doing this. I did not think jumping spiders would be able to leave--then return to their prey like that. She proceeded to finish it and purposely dropped it off the wall by cutting all the threads holding it.


Here you can see her true size. Macro shots really change perspective. As I said, she's not that big for jumping spiders on a world scale. The light fixture next to her in this shot is just big enough to hold a standard size light bulb. This is the door lamp I take pictures at almost every night.

HUGE Jumper-

She's gained some weight since the earlier posts !! This is the same Jumping spider that lives in the lamp next to my door. The same one in that video I've been showing my family (I got her catching a Lacewing on video a while ago). She's gotten massive very quickly. There is almost no question--She's ready to lay an egg sack. This is the about fattest, but not largest jumping spider I've ever seen. There are truly large jumping spiders in the tropics, but for around here, she's big. Definitely well fed from my the lights being on- I see her almost every night in her hole or right near it. She rarely goes out when I'm there, so when I found her on my wall I took all kinds of pictures. She has been living in a hole made of a padded-kind of silk that is similar to the silk produced by trapdoor spiders in look at feel. Most Jumping spiders have some kind of hangout like this.

Here are some of my favorite shots-

I no longer change dates you have these pages at the top of my blog-- Thankyou's, wishlist, and The Story. These posts will remain in my blog--I may add a button to get those, for now I'm running like anormal blog. You can find them in archives or down the blog.
My pet jumper--Lives right above my door lamp- an interesting study to write about later.





























Recently a B17 flew right over my back yard! ...........An ant lion--magnified nearly 10x

ALL insects and spiders are LIVE subjects unless noted. I do not kill bugs
to photograph them--no matter how hard or how long it takes to get the
shot without doing so! And believe me, some shots take hours to setup or
get right. That is an ethical rule I will always observe. Insects and spiders
found dead are easy to photograph but generally look very dead! I have heard
some photographers kill spiders or insects to make them easy to photograph.
I think that is a waste, and really sick.

Night shots, lots of fun-

My camera was set at 400ISO with no flash took the image of the lacewing on the left. I should have left it alone, I messed with it too much in Photoshop--beware if you use photo-edit programs-MAKE BACKUPS ON CD just like negatives. I have one for this picture but it's not important enough for me to dig it up. This camera one has a noise filter in that is impressive for low light shots. Notice the sack spider on the left of this picture on the right. They all are around my outside lights. On the bottom right bug, no was only about 3mm long! The leaf hopper was even smaller !

A bumble bee, and three bee look alike s. These "dumb-flies" mimic bees and wasps. They have been called dumb-flies because of their confidence in trickery, making them easy to catch and or photograph. One of them landed on my outside light. That fly on the bottom right of pictures is a strange looking one, I have only seen a couple of times. I was able to photograph this fly only a few times.