Got a new Camera (Canon EOS450D – smashin’) and telephoto lens, was bustin’ to get using it and I thought of a big spider that’s been out the back yard for the last few weeks, getting bigger every day.

He lives about 15 feet in the air, with his web running from a tree, to the umbrella of our picnic table. I used the new zoom lens, and tried photographing him from the ground. Took a few shots to get the focus sharp, and the flash set to the right level not to ‘white him out’.

This shot was the best. The level of detail on him is amazing (click the link to get to a high-res version) as well as the size of the Depth-of-Field. His front legs are going out of focus, and his back legs a bit.

Best of all was the fact that the flash has actually given him Red-Eye, how detailed is that!

For info, he’s about an inch long.

Oh, and his name’s Stanley.

Just back from our trip round China that we went on for our honeymoon. Had a whale of a time. It was like being on 7 holidays packed into one. We saw soooo much, dipped into local culture saw some amazing sights and took a tonne of photos (1500, thank the FSM for cheap Gb memory cards!)

We’ve cut the number down to about 700 keepers, still far too many to stick em all on the web.

I have copied a selection of them here so have a look.

Also we came off the Great Wall the fast way! We could have walked another 45 mins to get back to our bus but instead chose to go via Zipwire in 45 seconds…

The video is here (34Mb)