walkin' into spiderwebs

I've been eyeing a spider for several nights now - she's been building her web on my sister-in-law's front porch, right outside the window, by the porch light. Finally I could resist it no longer. I got my camera - disabled the flash, lowered the aperture, set up the tripod, and unfortunately kept the ISO on auto because I'm not confident yet in messing around with it. I'm saving that for later tonight. :)

The moon wasn't enough light on its own, so my brother-in-law Brandon helped give some more light to the spider and the web by shining a small flashlight up to it. I am sure someone with more experience and a professional camera could have come up with a better shot, but hey, I'm still learning and stuff like this gives me great practice for using my camera on manual mode.

The web angles in the above photo are so cool, I wish the spider itself was in better focus. The yellow hue of the porch light was just gorgeous, and I didn't want to add any more light to it, so when she moved, she blurred. Maybe I should just say I meant to do that. ;)

I am hoping that tonight she will rebuild her web completely - I'm going to try it again and work with the ISO in the manual mode. Maybe my niece will come out with me again and watch her "Charlotte" get busy spinning.