Two Days and Three Nights
before she took down her own Web http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/spiders-recycling/ and moved on.

During the day, she was terrified of me and was quick to run away. At night, she remained in her web. However, in the pitch black of night, I had to hold a flash light in one hand to illuminate her enough to see and then photograph her. This was done while also holding the camera in my other hand and shooting. No tripod or flash was used. Just high ISO.

In all honesty, I'm not particularly a fan of spiders. Girly thing...
Nevertheless, photographing Nature can often offer a new insights into things we may not normally understand. Spiders perform a job in the natural world. I truthfully had much less personal problems with tiny biting flies during the time she stayed. So, gruesome as it was, she was doing her job.

Although doing the photography was very difficult (see above), I found documenting this spider fascinating. I never intended to take more than the first nighttime photo that I did with a flash light as a challenge. Still, I kept returning to her for as long as she remained. Color variations of The Spider are the result of varying lighting and exactly how that lighting hit the subject. I tried 3 different flash lights for the night shots.

The ID on this spider: She is a GARDEN ORB WEAVER who "are usually nocturnal feeders, resting head down in their webs waiting to catch flying insects. They make a sticky rounded orb. During the day the spider will often rest somewhere near the web. They are commonly found around human habitation; so may be found resting under eaves and in similar places. When disturbed they will retreat towards this rest area. Their bite is not dangerous to humans but may induce mild, local pain."