What's there to do on a warm summer's evening? Get outside and grab some dinner, right? An orb-web spider and I had the same idea: I was getting ready to barbecue (or braai, as we South Africans like to call it), when I stumbled across this little green orb weaver building its web. I grabbed my camera and watched it for a good hour while it continued its construction and subdued its prey.

It's fascinating to watch a spider build a web ... and hard to believe that so much silk can come out of such a small creature. You can learn a bit more about the marvels of spider silk by watching this TED talk.

If you're a fellow photographer and interested in how I shot these, here's a little breakdown. A tripod is necessary. Macro photography in low light is one of the hardest things to get right due to the tiny depth of field you have when wide open. So grab your tripod and close the aperture down. Most of these photos were shot at f11 to retain more of the spider's detail.

Now let's talk background. Due to the proximity of your camera to the subject, it's going to be soft (even at f11), unless it's right near the subject. So your only real decision is how to expose it. I chose to go for a pretty dark background, with some colour remaining, and I adjusted my exposure using the shutter speed. This does create the problem of a blurred or under-exposed subject ... but flash to the rescue! I use a Nikon SB 900 with a TTL cord to get off-camera flash. Never use on-camera flash – ever (that's my rule, at least, mostly because it looks boring). From here, I adjusted my flash power to get the right exposure on the subject (manually - because you have more control). If you don't know how much power to use, start at 1/32 and go from there. 

Now let's talk background. Due to the proximity of your camera to the subject, it's going to be soft (even at f11), unless it's right near the subject. So your only real decision is how to expose it. I chose to go for a pretty dark background, with some colour remaining, and I adjusted my exposure using the shutter speed. This does create the problem of a blurred or under-exposed subject ... but flash to the rescue! I use a Nikon SB 900 with a TTL cord to get off-camera flash. Never use on-camera flash – ever (that's my rule, at least, mostly because it looks boring). From here, I adjusted my flash power to get the right exposure on the subject (manually - because you have more control). If you don't know how much power to use, start at 1/32 and go from there. 

The web has done its job and the spider's catch is ready to be devoured. You can watch the whole web-building construction process in this video