“How did you get into photography?” Jessica asked this weekend while we were exploring South Florida’s curious culinary landmarks.

I bought a camera on eBay, I told her, opened the box, attached the lens, and went outside. The first thing I saw was a spider’s web, and I developed that first image of the first roll in a dark room later that week as part of a photography workshop.

Soon after, kthread was born, in May of 2004 (I started blogging later, so we celebrate those anniversaries in January). That first spider image became the background of the first kthread, a conceptual Flash site where a spider figures heavily in the navigation. More details on kthread design and cyberfeminism in the colophon.

Another spider hovers in the current header image of this blog, and the universe continues to place webs in my path.

With so much still to learn about photography, I’ve found webs difficult to capture (perhaps it’s the challenge I enjoy so)—the strands are too slender for the camera’s viewfinder, and it all dissolves into a beautiful blur.

(Read the rest after the jump.)

Late afternoon sun often throws webs into focus, though, and Ziggy-zaggy (yes, that should explain my profile image and Halloween costume) patterns dazzle while the spider continues her work, climbing up to patch a section,

back down to command the center of her strung architecture.

Behind and beyond the web, I now attempt to make the background into colored bokeh circles (swimming to the right in the image below).

Even from the side, as I stealthily draw closer to a still and silent web,

it begins to dance, gifting light,

industriously sending vibrating lines of work down, up, and out—

1. mrphilipfr:
   August 8th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

   You sure make a spider web look pretty. I still hate running into them… yuck! Maybe I should pay attention to where I’m going =o)

2. Kristen:
   August 8th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

   Thank you, Mr. P. Perhaps the spiders do want you to notice their webs :)

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Or add a Video Comment

with

« Back to text comment

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

Posted Wednesday, August 6th, 2008, 8:40 pm | Filed in Cyberfeminism, Design, Photography. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.