There is some nice lavender outside of the condos where I live and I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to photograph the bees that were buzzing around it all summer. The lavender is spent now, so I thought for Friday the 13th* I would try and capture the big garden spiders everywhere. One of them caught a bee even. I added an extension tube to my 100mm macro lens, pulled out the tripod, and started taking photos. Alas, none of them turned out. I had a hard time focusing on the spiders really close because of an ever so slight breeze. Really close up macro shots reduce the depth of field—what is not blurry—so it take a lot of effort to get the right spot in focus. I had hoped to try focus stacking the images, but with the breeze the spiders were always moving. Oh well, at least I have a couple photos of bees. They were hard enough to get because they are always moving around too. Thee photos were not taken with my macro lens, but I think they still look great.
* Do you know the reason Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day in Western cultures? It is most likely because on the morning of Friday the 13th in 1307 the Knights Templar were attacked and essentially wiped out by a pope that was fearful of the power and fortune they had amassed.