Clever photography
Here’s a photo my father Paul took.
It’s actually not a very big spider. What he did (I kid you not) is duct-taped a lens onto the front of his camera… backwards. Why this works I couldn’t tell you… but it’s why you get that awesome blurry fading effect: the depth of field very very shallow (1mm or so), so even with a very small spider most of it is out of focus.
Similar tricks with the foil of a chip packet and a metal wrist-watch strap give utterly unrecognisable abstracts. But it’s the giant menacing Fog-Spider of Doom that tickles me.
Comments
I'm sure it's damn near impossible. Which only makes the spider shot cooler, in my (admittedly biased) opinion.
(Also: "reversing filter adapters"? "extension tubes and bellows"? Didn't you hear me when I said duct tape?)
You can get reversing filter adapters that allow you to reverse the lens without the messiness of duct tape. Additionally you can simply mount the lens on your camera backwards, or use a massive series of extension tubes and bellows. Whenever I've tried any of this, I've run up against how incredibly hard it is to focus when you only have a DOF 1mm large and an ungainly contraption bolted to your camera.
Very cool picture I must add.