Yes, this is a real encounter between a preying mantis and a spider.
And I can tell you this... it was no contest and it was gruesome. The mantis grabbed the spider with it's front arms, held on tight and consumed every bit of the spider in one sitting.
The bottom left image was actually taken AFTER the top one but is of the same spider. After the top image was taken the spider ran away as fast as it could across the lawn. I followed it to take the picture used in the tryptch. It went a LONG way for a spider without stopping, about 75 feet (23 meters), before I recaptured it and took it back because I wanted a picture of the spider and the mantis closer together. I was surprised by what happened.
Each image in this tryptch consists of a macro taken on the same day (Aug 26, 2007) within a few minutes of each other, unfortunately in direct sunlight.
Nothing special in post-processing. Each image was processed separately of the others:
1-Conversion from RAW with white balance, color and contrast adjustments.
2-Some minor selective color adjustments in Photoshop.
3-Mild dodge and burn highlighting of each image on 50% grey layer.
4-A tad bit of cloning to remove minor distractions in a couple images.
5-Cropped, resized and sharpened.
6-Images then assembled into a tryptch.
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Place: 56 out of 503 Avg (all users): 6.4768 Avg (commenters): 7.2353 Avg (participants): 6.5660 Avg (non-participants): 6.2667 Views since voting: 1294 Views during voting: 233 Votes: 151 Comments: 22 Favorites: 3 (view)
Personally, I think you'd have been better served with just the top panel and more of the mantis showing, but an amazing confrontation regardless and very well lit and captured.
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