Photo of the Day - Along Came A Spider:



A Spiny Backed Orb Weaver to be specific but I'll get to him (or her) in a minute. Man yesterday was a busy but awesome day! It was capped off with us going to the Florida Southern vs. University of Tampa basketball game which Florida Southern won in overtime after being down over 20 points with under 10:00 left to play in the game. WOW. If you appreciate basketball in any way you would have absolutely loved this game! This is always a huge rivalry game so regardless of the records of the teams it is always hard fought and close. Last night was no exception. I couldn't be happier for our guys - they battled and really pulled it off when it mattered most! So proud!

The above photo has, well, nothing to do with that. :-) This is actually one of the last shots I took while touring Mom's Camellias last week. I've always been a bit shaky shooting spiders after a rough experience I had a few years ago when a very large banana spider fell down the back of my shirt while I was shooting another one in front of me. I guess I was too caught up in the moment and bumped his web and down my shirt he went. Fortunately we were both so shocked about the whole experience that no one was bitten or stomped in the experience. Needless to say I pay a little more attention to what is behind me while I'm doing macro work now. I found this little guy and decided to give some more hand held macro photography a shot. If you think hand held macro of flowers is tough give it a shot with a spider no bigger than a dime on a web blowing in the wind. I took way more shots than I published but these four really worked out. This is a Spiny Backed Orb Weaver that managed to get it's web between two of the Camellia bushes. These guys are great pest control and aren't much of a pest so enjoy them! Anyway here are some more shots of the weaver in action:







Thanks so much for stopping by today and hopefully the spiders (or the one of dropping straight down the back of my shirt) didn't creep you out too much and you'll be back here tomorrow! Have a great day!

Photo of the Day - Halo Moon:



Another Wednesday/hump day is behind us and I can't believe that we will already be leaving tomorrow evening to head up to Atlanta for the SEC Championship!

Sometimes it just pays to look up! Late on Monday night when I was taking the trash out to the end of our driveway. Most nights I do this to see what the night sky has in store and I'm rarely disappointed but on Monday night, it forced me to get out the camera even in the cool weather. At the time I had no idea what was going on but just knew it looked really interesting and that I wanted to get a shot of it before the clouds covered it up. I managed to get a few decent shots before the clouds took it away and headed back inside. After doing some quick google research I found out that this "Lunar Halo" is "caused by by refracted moonlight from ice crystals in cirrus clouds in the earth’s upper atmosphere the shape of the crystals causes the moonlight to be refracted into a ring around the moon and apparently sometimes signal the arrival of unsettled weather. Special thanks to Derek Beasley and the Local 15 Weather Authority's Facebook fan page for enlightening me! The rest of the photo set can be viewed here.

It was a 3 for 1 - saw a really cool event in the sky, got to take some pics of it, and then learned all about it! Can't beat that!

Thanks for checking out my photo of the day today! Be sure to come by again tomorrow for Thursday's edition which will have to be posted early since we're leaving for Atlanta tomorrow evening! See you tomorrow!