Arachnophobia

I’m not sure why, but when I include spiders in my lectures, there is usually someone (on the front row) who suffers from arachnophobia. The poor sufferer sometimes has to cover her eyes until I move on to other subjects. I say “her”, because I haven’t had a man scream at the sight of one of my spiders – yet – but there is a first time for everything.

Personally, I find them fascinating creatures to watch and a real challenge to photograph. As with all small subjects, depth of field is the big challenge – and the closer you get to the spider, the less depth of field you are going to have. Compromise between shutter speed and ISO can also be a consideration, unless you use flash.