Spinybacked orbweaver, with lunch - critique welcome!

I first saw this Gasteracantha cancriformis early today with a nice, clean web. In the space of about twenty minutes, it had four flying ants, and was noshing on one of them. Actual size is under 1/2 inch (about 9mm).

This was taken from a distance of just under a foot (30cm or so), using a tripod, my 100-300 at 300mm with 6x of close-up lenses stacked on it, and my flash to get a decent DOF. The shot has been cleaned up with Noise Ninja (gotta get the ISO off of 800...), cropped, and had one click of auto-contrast.

Other than getting a different angle (impossible due to where its web was strung) does anyone have suggestions?

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I love these guys, we have them around here as well, quite colorful characters, here is my suggestion, buy a set of extension tubes to go with that lens, you wont regret it. also, try using an off-camera flash linked by a cable to the camera, you can change the lighting angle. hope this helps.

That's a beautiful spider, and a great photo.

Cool looking spider. A little more light so we can see the face would make it perfect.

Nice shot. Thats a really neat spider !

Whoooa, Texas monster spider, what an unusual shape. Great capture. I like Bald Eagle suggestion of moving the light off camera to illuminate the lower part of its body.