March 2026 Wildlife Photography Contest Intermediate Category Winner

Kubah National Park is a national park in Sarawak, East Malaysia. During a night photography trip to the park, we photographed many nocturnal subjects — mating frogs, multiple spider species, stick insects, moths, leaf mantis, and other insects.

As darkness fell, we came across this fishing spider floating on a stream, spotted from a wooden bridge above. We took turns shining a torch on it, and the spider proved remarkably cooperative, holding its position long enough for each of us to photograph it comfortably. I focused manually and worked through several camera settings, adjusting the ISO to ensure the spider was properly illuminated. A diffused flash served as the primary light source. The exposure for this selected frame was 1/125s, f/11, ISO 400, captured on a Canon 7D Mark II with a Canon EF 180mm macro lens.

For post-processing, the RAW file was first processed in Camera Raw, with minor adjustments made in Photoshop using the Brightness/Contrast and Curves tools. The image was then cropped to a square to remove the black negative space on either side, and Topaz Photo AI was applied for final sharpening.

Exposure: 1/125s · f/11 · ISO 400 · Canon EF 180mm macro · Canon 7D Mark II