Photograph by the author at Morgan’s Rock Hacienda and Ecolodge, Nicaragua.

Growing up in Costa Rica prepared me for most encounters with the eight-legged kind I’ve had later in life, so that I have to hide a smile as my housemates here in Ithaca rave about the size of our household spiders in all their sweet innocence. A few years ago when I was working in Nicaragua I made an effort to photograph many of the arachnids I came across, and I’ve included a gallery of some of those shots below. But just a couple weeks ago while browsing the great blog Colossal I found this and was stunned, not by the size of the spiders because most of them are really quite tiny, but by the incredible diversity and beauty that Nicky Bay was able to capture in the spiders of Singapore. If you have some free time and no problem with close-ups of creepers, crawlers, weavers, and stalkers, I’d highly recommend browsing Bay’s macrophotography galleries for an hour or three.

While my photos  were taken with an HD underwater camcorder, Bay uses an impressive array of camera equipment that he helpfully talks about here; you can also read some brief thoughts by my brother on shooting macro without macro lenses.

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Jobson at Colossal links to a page by Nadia Drake at Wired that I agree is worth reading as well. Next time you find a spider in the corner of your room, pull out your camera, not your swatter!