Garden_Spider

=Black and Yellow Garden Spider= =by Sharon Woodbridge=

As I was coming out the back door of my house I noticed a lovely spider web with a [|black and yellow garden spider] Argiope aurantia on it. You can barely see it in the first photo but it is just above the red canna leaf closest to the wall.

As I got closer the spider and her web were more and more beautiful. She has a zig-zag strip of web-material down the middle of her circular web and sits in the center waiting for prey. You can see something she caught immediately in front of her mouthparts in these photos.

I took pictures from every angle and over several hours. The photos I liked best were those I took later in the day when the sun was shining right on the web. I particularly like the first photo which shows the spider's shadow the wall. I cropped these images to zoom in even more. I took these photos with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 using the automatic mode. The LX1 can take 8.4 Megapixel images when using the 16:9 aspect ratio. The photos I took were using 3:2 aspect ratio therefore they were 7 Megapixel images. It also includes a 4:3 aspect ratio setting. The camera has a 4X Optical Zoom and includes Optical Image Stabilization which means it corrects for my shaky hands. It has a manual mode as well as the automatic. It has a 2.5 inch LCD screen but does not include an electronic viewfinder. I cannot take pictures using the view finder on most digital cameras, I just cannot judge whether an image is in focus with such a small viewing area. It is a small camera which fits in a purse or shirt pocket.