Gossamer Webs...
Sometimes a photograph does say it all
"This is Spider Time. Now they appear to be most numerous and busy at millions of spiderlings that climb to high perches and spin long
filaments of silk by which they are wafted aloft on currents of warm
air and may be carried hundreds or thousands of miles. Probably that
is why there are spiders on lonely islands, deserts and almost every
part of the world except mountain tops and arctic regions...
In autumn, most of the gossamers in fields and drifting through the air were spun by tiny Balloon Spiders. Sometimes, borne away by those streamers, they are found far above the clouds or far out at sea..."
These first two paragraphs have been taken from an article in the Nature Bulletin No. 165 October 18, 1980 Forest Preserve District of Cook County (Illinois, USA).
Many times I have seen the landscape carpeted by these finest of filaments as the last days of autumnal warmth hang on until November chills take hold. Rarely have I been able to capture their delicacy because of that unknown photographic factor... will it come out on the film? Bracketing exposures was always the standby with difficult lighting situations... but you still didn't know whether the exposure was OK until viewing the transparencies on the light-box hours or days later.
Of course all that has changed... this evening, after cutting firewood, I noticed the ploughed fields next to our French garden were covered in gossamer threads - floating, billowing, moving like a sea swell in the evening breeze. I took several shots on my Nikon D200 and 300mm AF Nikkor telephoto lens (equivalent to 450mm on a digital camera compared to 35mm film usage) but I felt they would come to nothing... there are times - many times nowadays - when an image of what I have seen is best remembered in my mind and not in the camera's memory. These are experiences that are best remembered because it's almost impossible to show someone else a recorded image which isn't carrying your emotions with it.
As I was walking back to the house, brushing away many threads that had wrapped themselves across my face and around my bare arms, I turned around and saw that many had also been caught on the old fencing around the veg plot... after a few more exposures I knew I had an image for tonight's weblog... plus a selection below that didn't make it... from shooting directly into the light to uneasy cropping. By the way, the horseshoe was there... I'd never noticed it before!
9:08:04 PM 
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