Eye of the beholder

I'm pretty certain that I am not alone, as a person and as a photographer, in my opinion that everything has its own natural beauty. Take spiders for example; while reviled by many, I find their unique forms and features to be fascinating and beautiful.

I found this particular specimen making its web at the side of my house, while I was walking one of my dogs. As the web was only a few feet off the ground, I had to stop Jax from having a snack while I checked out the spider.

Next it was a case of grab my camera, macro lens, flash and Flashbender modifier. This time I switched to TTL balanced flash and Aperture Priority on the camera so I could concentrate more on framing and focusing. Of course, breaking out a light stand and getting the flash off camera would have also been an option but I went to for on camera flash bouncing light off the Flashbender to create indirect illumination.

I did a quick search on Google but so far I have not identified the particular species of spider. Still, I find it to be pretty striking and after taking about 30 images, I left it alone to go back to creating it's web.