Webs

Whenever I feel restless and in need of some photographic therapy, I head out to the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, a little less than 20 miles from my home in southeast Texas.

This past Saturday morning, I headed out that way with the intention of getting to my favorite spot in the refuge to capture some scenery shots with the ground-hugging mist floating above the landscape.

As I drove along the refuge road, I noticed all these spider webs sparkling in the morning sunlight.

Naturally, I had to stop.

Of course, this meant by the time I arrived at my favorite spot, all the mist was gone.

That’s ok.

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Note:  capturing images of dew-dappled silken strands strung across the air from one tree/fence post / plant stem to another is a bit of a challenge with a telephoto lens.  The lens simply doesn’t want to autofocus on something that ephemeral, choosing instead to either focus beyond the web, or not at all.  I probably should have used the manual focus except my eyes just don’t focus as well as they used to and manual focus on anything other than infinity is a chore.

For the images above, the ISO ranged from 400 – 500, shutter speed ranged from 1/125 – 1/320, f-stop ranged from 5.6 – 7.1 and the focal length was 400mm.