Vinodh Venugopal's Image

Vinodh Venugopal (India) makes the most of the light rain to illuminate the iridescent colours in an orb weaver’s silky masterpiece.

Night after night, Vinodh waited patiently in his garden for orb weaver spiders to spin their webs. He got to know their schedules well, observing that the spiders were more likely to set their traps when it was lightly raining.

Once they started adding sticky spiral threads to the supporting spokes, Vinodh had no more than five minutes to get the photograph he imagined, so he had to work quickly.

In order to photograph the spider constructing its silky showpiece, Vinodh used two exposures. A short one, revealing the spider’s markings in detail, and a much longer one, all the while illuminated with a low-intensity torch.

The spider spinning its silky trap left a ghost-like impression each time it paused between the spokes. The iridescent colours the result of moisture on the silk refracting the torchlight - much like how rainbows are created by raindrops and sunlight.