Whatever orange was present in the specimen is somewhat exaggerated in the photos since they are just a bit over-exposed. Still though, these are great photos of a beautiful spider.

Thanks for that Peckhamia link, Ken. I've been looking for that journal for years now.

As I mentioned below, I didn't fool around with the colors (saturation etc) when I got it on the computer. However, I did adjust the lighting some in an effort to see more detail. Should I not do that?
It just seemed to dark to me and some of the detail wasn't nearly as visible.
FYI, it was getting close to dark when I took this pic.

Nothing at all wrong with adjustments IMO, as long as the photo becomes more accurate as a result. If the spider had this bright, reddish/orange color then I'd say you did nothing wrong, and certainly nothing worth being nitpicky about in a forum like this.

If you want some nitpicky help, you're more than welcome to e-mail me a couple of the originals. :-)

I wonder why it's such a bright red/orange color?
I saw another one (not as big) about 10 feet away that was this same bright color. I don't think I've seen these this brilliant before.

By the way, I did not mess with the colors after I got it on the computer.

I suspect it is a velvet ant mimic.

GB Edwards wrote a paper about this in Peckhamia in 1984 that I happened to run across recently - see article 59.1 at the following link:

http://peckhamia.110mb.com/numbers.html