Web master

OK, so it's actually a web mistress - it's the female of the species of orb weaver spiders that grow large and spin their intricate webs. This particular spider was resting comfortably on a dewy morning - so comfortably that dew had formed on her body overnight. She had good reason to be comfy. Nearby, in her "pantry" an unfortunate grasshopper lay in storage until the next mealtime. Circle of life kind of thing.

Still taking the Nikon D60 through its paces, and loving it so far. I had taken great pride in pushing the old Fujifilm Finepix s700 beyond its stated capabilities, but man, it took a lot of effort. It's very freeing when the technology works with you, not against you. Hopefully it will show in the pictures I make from here on out.

As always, click on the post's headline to see exposure data for these shots. While it only shows one set of info, I used the same settings for both pictures.

Nikon D60 Photo tip: If you look toward the bottom of the column of numbers and codes on the EXIF page, some pictures will say "Low gain up." That's the term for having Nikon's Active D-Lighting feature turned on. Basically, it lightens the tones in shadow areas and helps even out the contrast in the photo. I'm d-lighted to have the feature available, although I made a major unrecoverable error in some night shots a couple of weeks ago because I forgot to turn it off. Live and learn.

Click on pictures to enlarge. Photographs © 2008 James Jordan.