John Peters, Jumpers of Aus (ANIMAL & NATURE 2025)

These portraits of Australian native jumping spiders span from 3-4 millimeters in width, achieved with the Canon 90D's 32.5 megapixel 1.6x crop sensor (allowing me to further crop the images), the Canon 100mm 1:1 L macro lens, and the Raynox DCR-250 on top of the 100mm to achieve 2:1 magnification. Each image is the result of focus stacks ranging from 18 images to 41 images (processed using Zerene Stacker). Jumping spiders are quite active, and make quick movements, so capturing perfect stacks with perfect symmetry is far harder than one might think. On average, for one spider, it takes me about 500 shots for me to get the perfect stack, sometimes even 1000, but the result of the final image is surely worth it. Though I am the photographer, I give all the glory and credit to the Lord God Almighty for His magnificent creation, that even something as tiny as jumping spiders can give us a glimpse of His glory!

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.