Macro

Almost all of this is made within walking distance of the house, most of it in the garden, in evening light or with a flash and a diffuser I built myself. The lens is a Canon EF 100mm macro without stabilisation, on a body without stabilisation, so anything at life size is either braced, tripod-mounted, or lit hard enough to freeze itself.

The interest is structural rather than decorative — how a thing is assembled, where it catches light, what it is doing when nobody is looking. A spider at the hub of its web is a working animal, not an ornament, and the pictures try to describe it that way: frontal where possible, the whole subject in the frame, the background dark enough that nothing competes.

Species names on this page are given at the level I can actually defend. Where I am not certain, the caption says what the thing is rather than guessing at what it is called.