My best friend also hates spiders. Although I protect him from them in real life, I have put spider stickers on the mail I send to him for years. I just ran out of spider stickers, but not to fear! Spider stamp is here!

Anyway, no solution to your problem, but I did find a funny photography article when I was looking around: http://photo.net/learn/macro/

Spider stamp, spider stamp, does whatever a spider canmps.

Heh, that article is awesome! Love the photo of the bottom of the foot.

Also, I apologize if my response led the comments in a different direction. I suffer from Love-To-Feel-Helpful Syndrome :P

Have you taken a look at the B&H catalog? They've got some kits for product photography that might inspire you, even if they aren't in your price range and you don't need a human-sized cube tent.

Now that song is stuck in my head.

My SO did this with a handheld flash, a few mirrors, and a single small diffuse/umbrella light. Hence mirrors and clamps. It's not the stuff, you can create magic with very little. But man, you can never have too many clamps. Holds papers, mirrors, matt paper, see through paper, all sorts of things. He steals a few chairs (so he can clamp stuff to the back) and my tripod and he's off snapping away.

Madamina, no need to apologize! I suffer from the syndrome. I think I obscured what I was really asking by overexplaining and adding unnecessary, confusing details. Everything here and there is helpful! I'm excited.

dabitch, that photo is just ... gorgeous. Like...wow. If I could take photos like that! Alright, first I'm going to invest in a few mirrors and a small diffuse and experiment.

Oh and thank you!