Week 9: photographing spiders and moss.

As it turns out, after changing my mind way too many times, my second story will be on spiders. I went out this weekend hoping to catch sight of some spiders, but the three I did spot were all so similar to the point of being identical; if I had to guess, they were probably of the same species? About 2 mm big, translucent limbs, silvery abdomen with extremely thin red steaks, and an orangish underside (which unfortunately I did not get to capture clearly):

this is the closest i got to getting a shot of its "belly."

Overall, it was a very tedious process, chasing the critter around with my chunky camera as it did its best to run away from me. But! I did get two good, visible pictures. Hopefully, I’ll get to use them in my story due tomorrow.

I remember there was a moment when I was so intent on capturing the spider on camera that I’d completely forgotten about the fact that my body was hovering off the beaten path and over the understory patches. I almost stopped breathing during the “photo shoot” when it finally occurred to me that the plants tickling my face (I’d gotten very close to the ground to get the shots) could maybe be poison ivy. I got up very quickly, did a quick scan and almost had a heart attack when I noticed that I was very incredibly close to some vines-of-potential-itch-and-pain. Later, I forgot about the threat again when I decided to take some macro shots of a patch of moss:

Pretty, isn’t it?

(…I think I narrowly escaped poison ivy’s urushiol, but even with three layers and long pants, I did not manage to avoid mosquito bites.)

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