Photographer's Log Photographer's Log

SPIDEY’S AMAZING DAY
As this past Autumn of 2006 began I was driving down Belle Road in warm, golden sunlight. Rounding the great “S” curve near it’s end a golden glow caught my eye. It was the sunlight lighting up this wild spider web like a lantern in the daytime.

In the lower right of the frame you see a “normal” spider web, woven by an everyday little spider, precise, even, a routine day’s work. But the web “lantern” seemed like a deliberate, aching work of artistic obsession.

I like to think the spider was an arachnid artist par excellence, who had experienced previous day’s sunlit radiance upon that fence and wanted to catch that light and display it with the works of his own eight little feet. That morning he got up with a design in his mind and worked feverishly all day trying to beat the coming rays of the sun until, finally, when he was finished, he was able to stand back and admire the delicate, gossamer art he’d woven to satisfy his little spider’s heart. While he rested within that golden shower of silk I was blessed to pass by and capture forever with my camera’s lens the beauty of this minute artist’s dedication and creativity.

The winds and rains long ago ravished his beautiful composition but for a few minutes one day, his work stood equally with that of all the great artists of the ages. If you look very closely perhaps you’ll see the image which I imagine Spidey wove into his silk to reflect in the sunlight that day: the profile of a baby bird looking to the left. Perhaps a duckling or chick? It doesn’t matter. My eye views this arachnid “Rorschach” with delight and I relish its tickling of my imagination.

It’s hard to take spider webs for granted any more. Now, in my travels, I find myself seeking out more web-weaving Michelangelos so I may photograph their delicately ephemeral artistic endeavors. -June Mohan

Photo: (Copyright Mohan 2006) To contact the artist, please send email to: junemohan@hotmail.com.