Things go Better with Coke

Spider sips some Coke-a-Cola on a nearby blind.

The hilight of my day today was to go across the street where they sell those flouresent chicken balls and have the $3.99 special. It was cold. Real cold. Well it didn't help that I was still in T-shirt mode. Once in the restaurant I took a seat next to the window. I glanced out onto the cold, cold street, that's when I noticed this spider (you could say I "spied her" - and yes it's a "her". Notice the front two legs in front of her face are not bulbous).

It was sitting on the blinds. At first I thought it was dead. As it wasn't moving. Then I thought it might have been dehydrated. Spiders pump water around in their bodies to move around. That's how their legs work. I decided to share my drink with it.

Using my fork I flicked a droplet of my coke onto the blind just in front of the spider. The spider crawled toward the droplet and started drinking. This was my chance to shoot it using my extension tubes. A guy at one of the tables behind me was staring at me while I was assembling my gear. When I made eye contact with him he just went back to eating his food face down.

When shooting with extension tubes it's difficult to focus on such small things as your depth of field is so shallow. I was trying to get the spiders eyeballs in focus. I think the depth of field was about one millimeter. Instead of using the focusing ring I found it easier to move the camera back and forth.

After eating my flouresent meal I quickly hurried back to the nice, warm apramtent and didn't step outside again that day.