I had been photographing the Maratus volans display for a year or so, with a Canon 50D. It had 15.1 MP and after the Canon 300D and Canon 20D it was the third digital SLR I owned. I was very happy with it, in fact I had been happy with all of them, but resolution was everything and when one came out with more megapixels I had to buy it. So when the Canon 7D hit the market in 2010, with a whopping 18 MP, it was time to upgrade. It also had video, but I didn’t care about that. In fact I found it quite odd that they put video into a stills camera and wished they hadn’t. I had been taking videos clips of my family with a camcorder until then, I didn’t need video in my SLR. One day though, while photographing Maratus volans in the wild, I wondered what flicking that little “video” switch at the back of the camera would actually do. I was just curious, so tried it out.
What I got back was rather disappointing, in particular the lack of depth of field was troubling. After sifting through various menu options I found that I could make improvements by changing aperture and ISO for example. There were plenty of issues that still concerned me, like camera shake and focussing, but I decided to give it a go, and at least try to film the courtship display of Maratus volans. I could have taken the spiders home and filmed them there. But there is nothing more important than light when filming macro and what better light than that of the sun. So I returned to the same spot many times, whenever I had time. It’s about a 30 minute car ride from my home, and then another 10 minutes on the mountain bike. As soon as I got there, I grabbed my camera and walked around until I found a spider, usually a male. But male spiders don’t dance just by themselves, they need to encounter a female. Of course you can wait for this to happen but you may be waiting for a very long time and I quickly figured out how to speed it up. After I collected one individual, either a male or female, I kept searching until I found one of the opposite sex. I then dropped the individual I collected next to the one that I had just found, and that usually got things going.
Finding the spiders and getting them to display I would say was the easy part, filming was way more challenging. Because the animals moved around so much I constantly had to move with them and make adjustment to aperture, ISO and focus while trying to keep the camera as steady as possible. And of course as soon as I had done my adjustments, the spider was off to another spot. Frustrating would be putting it mildly. And as if that wasn’t enough the March flies were starting to arrive. For them I must have been a dream come true, lying on the ground with my arms and legs exposed, concentrating on the spiders and trying not to move. I vividly remember one March fly landing on my nose at the most inopportune moment. I was just capturing a beautiful scene and I wasn’t prepared to let this insect ruin it. I tried to endure the pain, but eventually had to give in.
Most of the footage was unusable. But in the end there was enough to work with and it was time to assemble the movie. I was a complete novice when it comes to editing, but thanks to imovie and its simplicity this was something even I could master. What I found intriguing was how similar in a way the peacock spider courtship felt to the human experience. These animals wouldn’t just simply meet and then go for it like machines. I could see things that reminded me of human emotions and behaviour. I could sense curiosity and excitement when they met, disappointment and fear when the male’s advances were rejected and even something akin to happiness and satisfaction when things worked out. I also noticed how careful and considered the male’s movements were when he approached the female. He seemed aware of the risk at every step. There was drama as well. Males, if not paying attention, could easily become meals for females that had no interest in mating. There was a lot to show here.
Eventually I had enough of all the editing. I had cut it down to about 6 mins and after adding a David Attenborough style introduction and some commentary it was time to think about an audience. I had heard about YouTube where, rather incredibly, one could upload video footage for free. But I had a better idea. Over the years I had become a fan of the TV series Catalyst, a popular science program produced by our National broadcaster the ABC. A year earlier, after taking the first photographs of the Maratus volans display, I had already tried to entice them into doing something on these spiders, but received no response. Now I had video and it was worthwhile to give it another shot. I told them that I captured some truly extraordinary animal footage, not shown previously anywhere on TV, which I was convinced their viewers would love. They were interested, even more so after seeing what I had filmed. Before I knew it, they had organised a team and made arrangements for us to meet at my spider spot, doing an interview and re-enacting my spider search and photography.
Playing myself was fun, I tried to be as authentic as possible. Maybe I should have chosen acting as my career I thought. I was sad when it was all finished and I had to wave them goodbye. I felt very privileged getting an insight into how my heroes worked, and what equipment they used, and I was grateful for all their effort and the interest they had shown towards me and the spiders. Their idea was to use some of my footage and combine it with theirs. Now I had to wait and see what would become of all that and how an audience who had never seen this behaviour before would react. The program aired on 10 March 2011, and I was quite impressed with what they had produced. It is always a bit embarrassing watching yourself, but they had done a good job with it and my family and friends liked it too. I kept in touch with the team afterwards and they told me it was one of the most successful stories they ever produced. When you look for peacock spiders on google it is still comes up regularly in the search results.
This peacock spider movie, which I subsequently uploaded on YouTube, will always be special to me. Not only because it was the first peacock spider footage ever published, also because of the way I was able to produce it, all by myself, in the wild, and with equipment costing less than $1500. All Maratus volans clips I have seen subsequently on TV, including footage from BBC and ABC professionals, were produced with much more expensive equipment, and despite that expensive equipment and greater experience, all in a studio. If I had known at the time how professionals filmed and edited videos, what their equipment costs, and what the expectations were in regard to the quality of their footage, I would never have attempted such a video. It would have been completely out of my league in so many respects. What allowed me to succeed in the end was simply my naivety, in other words “not knowing” how things had to be done. I could approach this project like a child in the playpen, without being constrained by rules or expectations. I wish I could go back there, but unfortunately that naivety is now gone and will never return.
