I just love the Salticidae (Jumping Spiders). Whenever one manages to find its way inside our house and is discovered, I'll carefully capture it for macro photography. Yesterday I found this awesome specimen of what I believe to be a male Platycryptus undatus, though I'm not 100% sure on my identification. Shall we go over the field marks? Are any readers an arachnid expert? For photographing him, I setup a little studio on a piece of white paper beneath a fluorescent light. At first he wasn't very cooperative and kept jumping onto the camera lens. Though rather menacing in close-up photographs, this spider is only around 12mm long.
All images © 2008 Mike McDowell
