Cellar spiders

I mentioned yesterday that harvestmen are one of a few unrelated animals to be known as ‘daddy long legs’. Another is the cellar spider, Pholcus phalangioides. These are true spiders, unlike the harvestmen, and though they are very mildly venomous, it’s unlikely to come across one with both the inclination and the ability to bite through human skin. This is another one of those species that people think, mistakenly, would be lethal if they had longer fangs.

These spiders spend most of their time hanging upside down in their webs, catching and eating smaller invertebrates. They’re generally beneficial, since they eat pest species like mosquitos — in fact they’re useful for keeping down populations of certain dangerous spider species in Australia.

To photograph these spiders, I mostly used the DIY flash bracket I made. About halfway through I tried attaching a bounce card to the flash but found it kept hitting the webs and disturbing the animals. Eventually I realized that, as long as I was just in my basement photographing spiders sitting in webs, a tripod might be the better option. I do need to figure out some way to diffuse the flash a little better, especially for small reflective or translucent animals like these.

Another thing I realised in a discussion with another photographer on Flickr is that I keep all my photos in the same aspect ratio. The square crop you see above is a conscious effort to get out of that mental mold.