Michael Huber, 8, left, Lily Huber, 6, and North Sparks, 8, roast marshmallows Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011 at Golden Gardens Park in Seattle. The kids came with North’s mother, Marcia Wiley, to celebrate the winter solstice a day early because they were leaving town. Wiley said they were celebrating good friends and sugary treats on one of the darkest days of the year. The solstice occured at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Erika Schultz/The Seattle Times – Lynda Mapes provides more information about the solstice in The Seattle Times’ nature blog Field Notes.

A rower sets out in the fog on Lake Union earlier this month in Seattle. Some call it Artic sea smoke. Others refer to it as steam fog.

One of my favorite writers Lynda Mapes explains the conditions that create ethereal autumn atmosphere:

It sneaks in softly at first light: smoking over lakes, rising in swirls from ponds and cruising in from Puget Sound and the coast. Steam fog, special to this time of year, when the cool air of autumn collides with water still warm from summer’s heat.

Lynda mothers The Seattle Times’ nature blog Field Notes. The blog, kind of a hybrid between a farmer’s almanac and backpacker’s journal, reconnects us busy people with the seasonal cycles and events that are easy to rush by.

All images copyright Erika Schultz/The Seattle Times



This autumn, my editor approached me about photographing spiders for a Seattle Times natural history story being written by our science reporter, Sandi Doughton. (Working with Sandi is often a pretty sweet deal, since many of her assignments explore the mountains and waterways of Western Washington. Our last assignment we learned how to trap and track BATS! Yeh, thanks again Sandi!)

We visited Shannon Bowley, a Renton resident, who overcame her fear of spiders by keeping them as pets. We photographed her male giant house spider, whose relatives often can be found in homes looking for mates. He was quick, and not in his natural habitat, so I focused on a capturing a clean portrait of this guy atop of a plastic blue basket, seen below.

I rented a Canon MP-E 65mm f2.8 1-5x macro lens to get intimate with our eight-legged neighbors. This lens requires manual focusing, so it was sometimes a challenge to capture his eight fabulous eyes.

For the next part of this assignment, I looked for European cross spiders in the arboretum. These arachnids are recognizable by the white dots that form a cross on their backs. Within 10 or 15 minutes, I found half a dozen cross spiders. As you can probably guess, identifying these guys turned out to be the easiest part of this venture.

Their webs blow in the breeze. My movements scare them. And, when hand-holding a fine precision lens (sometimes on my back and/or in awkward positions in the bushes) it can be difficult to capture them before they scurry away.

Overall, the spider hunt proved entertaining and good challenge. Would love to do more macro work in the future. But, I’m still trying to figure out the best lenses to work with. Any recommendations?

This autumn, my editor approached me about photographing spiders for a Seattle Times natural history story being written by our science reporter, Sandi Doughton. (Working with Sandi is often a pretty sweet deal, since many of her assignments explore Western Washington. Our last assignment we learned how to trap and track BATS! Yeh!)

We visited Shannon Bowley, a Renton resident, who overcame her fear of spiders by keeping them as pets. We photographed her male giant house spider, whose relatives often can be found in homes looking for mates. He was quick, and not in his natural habitat, so I focused on a capturing a clean portrait of this guy atop of a plastic blue basket, seen above.

I rented a Canon MP-E 65mm f2.8 1-5x macro lens to get intimate with our eight-legged neighbors. This lens requires manual focusing, so it was sometimes a challenge to capture his eight fabulous eyes.

For the next part of this assignment, I went solo to look for European cross spiders in the arboretum. These arachnids are recognizable by the white dots that form a cross on their backs. Within 10 or 15 minutes, I found half a dozen cross spiders, which turned out to be the easiest part of this venture. Their webs blow in the breeze. My movements scare them. And, when hand-holding a fine precision lens (sometimes on my back and/or in awkward positions in the bushes) it turned out to be a challenge to capture these spiders before they scurried away.