5 Things Photographing Spiders Taught Me About Humans
It got hairy there for a bit. The one-year anniversary of lockdown hit me hard and my internal world was becoming crowded with monsters. I was experiencing a fair amount of despair and what pulled me out of it, to a significant degree, was jumping spiders. For the past couple of weeks, I have been obsessively photographing them and other fascinating tiny creatures. It's been wonderful. It's helping me transition out of lockdown-brain and into opened up-heart, and I've learned a few things along the way. Here are 5 such things.
One: Human brains are, among other things, filter and assumption machines. Part of leading a meaningful life means adjusting the parameters of our filters and challenging our assumptions.
I had seen photos of jumping spiders on the internet before and marveled at them, but I thought they were some kind of exotical feature of dangerous rainforests in countries deep in my bucket list, not hopping around just a few meters from where I sat the first time I googled ‘where do jumping spiders live’. I was elated and embarrassed to find they are one of the largest and most ubiquitous families of spiders, and that I had simply missed them. It's possible I had seen them in my backyard before, but my brain-sieve (web?) simply let them through, and I never thought to study them closely enough to find they are wonderfully different from other spiders.
If a spider looks at you, it’s probably a jumping spider. It’s definitely a jumping spider- they’re the only kind that the naked human eye can immediately recognize as being looked at by. Their largest eyes darken as tiny muscles point their retinas at you, and you can see down them as they cock their heads to the side, like a puppy listening to you sneeze. Some even wave their arms at you, with the kind of defiant bravery a wiener dog might display as it barks at a malamute.
A Zebra Jumping Spider, Salticus scenicus
Jumping spiders remind me of Mule Deer. Part of why I felt so called to by Mule Deer was because they too, stop to look at you. Unlike whitetail deer, who gallop away elegantly flashing their beautiful tufts of white swan-butt-like tail feathers, swishing them side to side like a prancing dancer, Mule Deer triangulate you using their gigantic rabbit-like ears and then stare you down, stomping their hooves to let you know they know exactly what and where you are.
Jumping spiders are the same- when they see you, they stop, they might do an excited circle or hop, then they’ll look right at you, and maybe wave an arm or two to let you know the looking is a two-way street. So, naturally, I love them. I am not as lonely as I was in high school, chasing mule deer, but lockdown has been a special kind of isolating as I'm sure I needn't explain. So taking eye contact where I can, I cock my head to the side to stare at them right back, a smile on my face. They also remind me of cats, with their frantic mix of both predator and prey instincts; they can appear both cute and carnivorous in the same moment.
A jumping spider eating what appears to be another jumping spider, but in a cute way
Two: It is easier than you might think to quickly redefine for yourself what is beautiful and what is monstrous.
Humans call spiders monstrous, through teeth many times the size and weight of their bodies. We judge them with eyes full of spidery blood-red veins, not elegant black orbs or intricate hexagonal blankets. We have the gall to suggest our bodies have something to do with the image of God while dismissing the exquisite symmetry of a host of legs fanning around a torso as ‘icky’. It’s funny, really.
And humor is a wonderful lube with which to grease the ludicrous gears of our hilarious human minds towards seeing beauty where we previously dismissed it. Just a few weeks of looking really close at spiders and I am a changed man. I kill bugs that scare or bother me with some regularity, I’m somewhat ashamed to say, but I haven’t so far since I started this project. It’s hard to kill your muse just for making a stunning web in the corner of your room when you’re trying to be an artist.
The same could be said for the monstrous things that lurk in our hearts and minds. Looking at them very curiously and closely often leads to a shift in how we see them, aesthetically. And that kind of appreciation is just a hop skip and a jump away from loving your shadow, which is a really great way to be a whole lot happier.
A Female Cross Orb Weaver Spider, Araneus Diadematus, eating an unidentified insect. These are all over my house. Far uglier things may lurk in your subconscious.
It can work the other way too; ladybugs are actually terrifying kaiju up close. It’s hard to unwatch a ladybug gobble up living aphids like I devour tiny pieces of the captain's finest crunch. I still find them beautiful, but it's mixed with more of a woah-there's-a-full-grown-hippo way than in an awww-look-at-that-pretty-bird way. The same can happen with some of your most ‘beautiful’ traits as well: for example, while pleasing people pleases people, investigating your desires for doing so may reveal them to be more kaiju or hippo-like than they may appear at first glance.
A Painted Lady Beetle, Mulsantina picta
Three: Patience is a kind of love. Waiting comes far easier to the fond-hearted. My tiny attention span has yawned wider than it has in a while, waiting for a bug to crawl out of its hole so I can snap its likeness. Love is the only thing that has enabled me to stick through the difficult bits, which is a lot of it.
Taking macro photos is really hard. I have been drawing on both meditative and military training techniques to do it: at the beginning of a walk, I'll slow down, breath deeply and mindfully*. This is done partly to switch modes and filters from human size objects to bug-sized ones, and partly because I gotta keep my hands steady. In the words of a friend of mine, I must erase my presence like an anime ninja. Recalling tips from firearms training, I try to depress the shutter button when my breath is completely absent from my body, at the moment right before an inhale.
It feels simultaneously exhilarating and calming. It feels the way I imagine a ball thrown vertically must feel in that precious moment where the human momentum that propelled it into the sky runs out, and before the tug of gravity brings it back down. At that moment it is weightless, free, serene and still.
Click.
This could have been a great image, instead its purpose is to make a point in a blog
You check the monitor and yeah, once again, the millimeter-long space you were trying to focus on was missed by, you guessed it, a millimeter, and the photo is worthless. In the above case, I was just a hair or so too far away from this zebra spider's eyes, so they're out of focus. Time to go ninja again. It can get really frustrating- you become amazed at how unstable your own hands are, you have to control for how much light gets lost in the process of using enough glass to get the magnification you're looking for, so you have to add in your own light using a flash. You've got to slowly, ever so slowly approach skittish insects with a massive black device and flopping diffuser, and then focus, frame, erase your presence like a ninja, and hope for the best.
Even the best can take dozens, even hundreds, of photos that don’t work to get a few that do. It's a really efficient lesson that good things take many attempts, which is something I've always struggled with- punishing myself for trying instead of taking comfort in knowing I am incrementally growing. So if you are impatient, itching to be better than you are, try love. It will happen. That, or there might be a bug on you.
Four: Humans, myself included, will pair-bond with anything. This is a good thing.
I found myself coming back to some of the same insects over the course of a few days, learning where their favorite places to sleep and feed are. Over time, it's hard not to develop a fondness for an animal you start sharing a routine with. I thought the spider community would be full of fascinated nerds, but it has just as many passionate spider-mothers and fathers, who fret over their pets as any dog or cat wonder does, who mourn them at the end of their (tragically short) life cycle and post pictures of them on the walls of their homes and social media profiles. One difference in spider ownership is that if your pet has kids, it has several hundred of them at a time, and I’ve seen some surprised spider parents become spider grandparents to scores of little spoods (this is the spider community’s equivalent of ‘doggo’). Pair bonding is full of surprises.
Another female Cross Orb Weaver Spider. Her pair bond is full of surprises too- their mate-eating behavior is described as ‘occasional’
Five: Art and everything is easier with community.
Being able to post my daily photos to a community of fellow photographers who are learning the same skills has been wonderful and motivating, and showing it to people who have never seen spiders this way before is extremely rewarding as well- you get to change minds and elate people as you reveal a new world to them. This is far more motivating than anything I could muster on my own. And when I run into a problem, I can ask for help from people with decades more experience than what I have. Community makes everything easier. I have come to accept over the past few years that I am no zebra spider- I cannot live on my own in some fence/apartment and try to accomplish things like being happy or writing a book all by myself.
A Lonesome Zebra Jumping Spider
When I post a photo to an identification group, I can expect a common and scientific name within minutes of posting. I always post ‘who am I?’ with all my photos. I know in context it seems like I am asking for the identity of the spider, and I am, but I’m also asking and receiving an answer from the community: Am I a spider person? I ask, and by responding to my identification query, they answer: Yes, you are a spider person. Am I a photographer? I ask, posting a photo. Yes, they say. You are a photographer.
Now I’m asking a question to you: am I a writer? I am? Wow. It’s so relieving to know, dear reader, that I’m indeed a writer. Writing alone in this room, I didn’t really know. But as you read this, I can feel it, I can feel your answer. I am a writer. Thank you.
It’s been so fuckin rough, friends, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. Alone is no way to be a human. I didn't post on this blog for a full year partly because, well, loneliness is about so much more than being alone. After a while, it gets you to believe terrible things- that you'll always be alone, and that the reasons you're alone are all your fault, and that it's always been this way. But we can prove those things wrong right now, friends, and we are. Like spiders, we can shed our old exoskeletons and bare our softest bits to the sun. Join me in a celebratory molt, won't you?
*For more on mindful photo walks, I recommend this video, from Micael Widell’s youtube channel. It’s my favorite source for practical tips regarding macro photography. Also check ‘the Bob Ross of macro photography’ Thomas Shahan, whose stunning images are always accompanied by his own lovely guitar playing.