King of the Hill

We’ve all heard the saying Stop and smell the roses, and on the day I took this photo that is exactly what I did. I was out for a short walk with my D200 and saw a collection of flowers in a giant pot, so I stooped down low just to examine them. There was nothing special or noteworthy about these flowers, but I have found that sometimes it’s nice to take a break and look at the world a bit closer and see what you can find. I soon noticed that there was at least a dozen small insects crawling around on the green stems and orange petals, almost like an entire micro-ecosystem was unfolding before my very eyes. The spider in this photo was too close for autofocus so I had to switch to manual, and I also tried to position it such that the background elements served to complement my unwitting subject rather than draw the viewer’s attention away. Perhaps f/1.8 was a bit too wide for this picture, as the depth of field is almost distracting, but I think overall it works OK.