“Hey! I'm Thomas Shahan, an artist and macrophotographer from Oklahoma. In my spare time over the past few years, I've been shooting portraiture of local arthropods. Why would I devote countless hours to tramping through forests, fields and the like searching for insects and spiders? Well, despite some common beliefs, arthropods (members of the phylum Arthropoda – insects, spiders, crustaceans...) represent an endlessly varied, wildly beautiful and fascinating bunch of animals with surprisingly personable faces and behavior. Often, all it takes is simply inspecting their lives on a closer level to turn repulsion to reverence”. – Thomas Shahan

Photo: Adult Male Jumping Spider at Sunset – Phidippus mystaceus. (Photo by Thomas Shahan; Source: Flickr)

(L-R) A man nicknamed "Barcelona", Alexey Bolotov and Alexey Jakushin drink vodka as they travel by a pioneer motorised railcar on their way to Kalach, Sverdlovsk region, Russia October 18, 2015. The "pioneer," a light auxiliary rail vehicle, is a popular form of transport among people who live along the Alapayevsk railway. In a remote corner of the Urals region at the end of a narrow-gauge railway is Kalach, population about a dozen. Three decades ago 600 people called the village home, but the local forestry industry suffered as the former Soviet Union imploded and people moved away in search of work. In Kalach today there are no telephones, no mobile reception and only a few hours of electricity a day. (Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

Sheep walk as they are herded to summer pastures in Serra da Estrela, near Seia, Portugal June 27, 2015. In late June, shepherds young and old in the Seia region of central Portugal start guiding sheep, goats and cattle to the Serra da Estrela, the country’s highest mountains, in search of better pastures. There they stay until the end of September. Modern-day shepherds may have mobile phones to keep in touch with family and friends, but their lifestyle has changed little for centuries. The sound of cowbells and the bark of longhaired mastiffs starts early in the morning as the animals – often decorated with traditional woollen balls on their horns – are herded up steep, narrow paths. (Photo by Rafael Marchante/Reuters)

A bloodied man who carried dead and wounded, speaks on the phone at the site of a suicide attack an explosion that struck a protest march, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, July 23, 2016. Witnesses in Kabul say that an explosion causing multiple casualties struck the march by members of Afghanistan’s largely Shiite Hazara ethnic minority group, who were demanding that a major regional electric power line be routed through their impoverished home province. (Photo by Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

The rusty emblem of the Soviet Union is seen over the ghost town of Pripyat close to the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Ukraine, Thursday, April 15, 2021. The vast and empty Chernobyl Exclusion Zone around the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident is a baleful monument to human mistakes. Yet 35 years after a power plant reactor exploded, Ukrainians also look to it for inspiration, solace and income. (Photo by Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo)

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a worker drinks at the construction site of the T3B terminal project of Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport in southwest China's Chongqing, July 11, 2022. Flooding and extreme high temperatures have caused multiple deaths in eastern China as summer heat descends earlier than usual. (Photo by Huang Wei/Xinhua via AP Photo)

This close-up image – of a Holi Festival celebrant in Vrindivan, India, coated in neon-colored powder – was submitted to National Geographic’s Your Shot in the last week of March. On April 1 we published it on our Daily News site, along with seven other bright scenes captured during the Hindu spring Festival of Colors. (Photo by Tinto Alencherry/National Geographic)

In this Sunday, May 4, 2014 photo, Survivors sit with their possessions near the site of Friday's landslide that buried Abi-Barik village in Badakhshan province, northeastern Afghanistan. Stranded and with no homes, many of the families have struggled to get aid. Some have gone to nearby villages to stay with relatives or friends, while others have slept in tents provided by aid groups. The unlucky ones have slept outside. (Photo by Massoud Hossaini/AP Photo)