I almost walked right into this Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia) while walking along a shaded row of plants at Nutty Brown Farm last Monday morning. She had built her enormous web right across the semi-circular shade net tunnel which made it very easy for me to photograph her against the sky above (you can see a hint of the netting blurred in the background here). These spiders are pretty huge and this one was a large specimen with a body about 2 inches long and nearly 4 inches from tip to tip.
For the technically inclined...