“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)

Cheng Liping, whose husband Ju was onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 which disappeared on March 8, 2014, shows a picture of she and her husband together and an old card with a message given by her husband, at a park near her house where she and her husband used to visit during an interview with Reuters in Beijing July 24, 2014. Cheng said her life has been totally changed since the incident. Their two little sons, who don't know about this incident, keep asking her when their dad is coming back. Six months after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with 239 mostly Chinese people on board, disappeared about an hour into a routine journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing March 8, loved ones of missing passengers derive what comfort they can from what's left behind after the world's greatest aviation mystery. More than two dozen countries have been involved in the air, sea and underwater search for the Boeing 777 but months of sorties failed to turn up any trace – even after narrowing the search area to the southern Indian Ocean – long after batteries on the black box voice and data recorders had gone flat. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

Performers dressed as Pikachu, the popular animation Pokemon series character, perform in the Pikachu parade in Yokohama on August 7, 2016. Some 50 life-size Pikachu characters, the most famous from the Pokemon game, marched along the city’s waterfront street as visitors took mobile phone pictures and videos of them in scorching sunshine. Some participants said they attended the event to search for rare characters of Pokemon – a word short for “pocket monster” – for the megahit smartphone app, which was launched in several countries around the world last month. (Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP Photo)

Indonesian rescuers search for victims of the crashed military airplane in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, 30 June 2015. At least people 49 people were killed after an Indonesian military plane crashed in North Sumatra and burst into flames, officials said. Air Force chief Air Marshal Agus Supriatna said there were no survivors after the plane ploughed into houses and commercial buildings in Medan, the country's third largest city. The plane left Jakarta with 113 people aboard, including military personnel and their relatives, but it was not clear how many continued the journey to Medan after stopovers in Pekanbaru and Dumai, Agus said. (Photo by Dedi Sahputra/EPA)

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)

A dog takes a rest under a destroyed house at a site where a landslide swept through a residential area at Asaminami ward in Hiroshima, western Japan, August 20, 2014. At least 36 people, including several children, were killed in Japan on Wednesday, when landslides triggered by torrential rain slammed into the outskirts of the western city of Hiroshima, and the toll could rise further, police said. Seven people were missing after a month's worth of rain fell overnight, loosening slopes already saturated by heavy rain over the past few weeks. (Photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters)

A man carries an injured woman in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan town in Idlib province, Syria January 9, 2016. At least 70 people died in what activists said where four vacuum bombs dropped by the Russian air force in the town of Maaret al-Numan; other air strikes where also carried out in the towns of Saraqib, Khan Sheikhoun and Maar Dabseh, in Idlib. (Photo by Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)