PHOTO-A-DAY CHALLENGE

Playing Hide ‘n Seek (With a Squirrel)

Week 60 of the photographic documentary of my daily life

Life is changing. The seasons are changing. Fall has arrived. The days are getting remarkably shorter and the weather even more unpredictable. It’s been cold, rainy, and wet this week. But then I’ve been running around in a shirt and shorts again.

I love fall. It’s a beautiful season. It’s a colorful season. It’s a season for photography lovers and nature enthusiasts.

This has been only the beginning of it but I’ve got a feeling that it will be a great one.

I was walking through the forest when I saw a squirrel on the ground. It disappeared in the bushes but then I saw it on the tree. I had my wide-angle lens on and didn’t consider taking a shot when I realized I had my camera backpack on. And there was a zoom lens inside of it. If this little fella would wait for me? He sure did.

Squirrels are rather rare to see in the part of Germany I live in and they are incredibly shy. It’s difficult to spot one for longer than a second and even more difficult to get them on camera. Just to explain to you how excited I was about this shot.

It’s been another all-grey day today and I was stuck at the airfield. Jumps had been canceled and I was a little depressed about being grounded for the second day in a row.

But then I remembered my other job. The job as a writer. I started to type. And I didn’t stop. Three articles later I looked differently onto my day. And the sky looked different too. Some light for the end of the day.

The weekend started a bit grey but then the clouds moved out of our way. The airfield was clear and we could finally go up again.

This picture I took on the way up to altitude. I love it when part of the sky is covered in clouds and part of it allows you to look onto the ground. It’s also fun jumping through scattered clouds like this.

Sunday meant a busy day ahead of us and as I was getting up in the morning the sky greeted me with the most amazing sunrise. I surely should get up more often for this special time of the day.

Then again, sunrise is getting later and later in the day which should make it easier for me to experience this moment.

Today I went out the door with my camera in my hand looking for some objects of fall to shoot. I captured yellow leaves, red berries, and dead branches. But none of it seemed the right shot for the photo-a-day challenge.

I looked down at the screen of my camera scrolling through the pictures I took when I saw the leaves on the ground. That’s it. That is the shot. What else is representing fall better than dead, brown leaves on the side of the road?

And here’s another squirrel because my last post about squirrels on Thursday got so much reader engagement (exclusively about how red our squirrels here in Germany are).

I went to visit my parents and went to the garden with my dad. He’s been telling me how close squirrels get to him when he sits on the terrace and how busy they are at the moment with hiding nuts.

Just as this squirrel ran past us and up into the walnut tree. Well, it was close enough for me to shoot it. But countless branches and big leaves were always in the way. The squirrel looked at me. I looked at the squirrel.

We were playing some kind of hide ‘n seek game when I capture the title image shot which was probably the best one I got. But this one was also kind of cool. You can clearly see the squirrel’s eyes focus on me. The intruder in his territory.

I met up with a school friend of mine today and we went for a long walk across the fields and along the edges of the surrounding towns. There’s always a lot to catch up on and we usually haven’t covered all topics yet by the time we part ways again.

But it’s always a great time we’re having together. And today specifically, I did enjoy walking through several avenues, especially those tree-lined with chestnut trees.

Chestnuts truly represent fall for me. I exclusively only see chestnut trees in fall. The rest of the year they don’t seem to exist. But they are just so beautiful. With the leaves turning golden and their beautiful nuts. Spiky and just so unique.

And here I exceeded again Snapshots’ word count and the article is way too long to shorten it. So I decided to submit it to W&W instead, rather than shortening my piece.

This has been my week in photographs. 7 days. 7 photographs. Anyone can join. Once. Or weekly. It doesn’t matter. We welcome everyone! Dennett was the one starting this photography challenge sometime last year and many have participated ever since.

Erika Burkhalter / Eileen Vorbach Collins / Sasha Meyer / Tracy Aston/ Lisa Bolin / Juan O. Aguilera / David Wade Chambers / Mia Verita / Susan Alison / LensAfield / Barbara Radisavljevic / Diana Lotti / Barbara Dalton / Kim Zuch / Sandra Barrett / Shruthi Sundaram / Ellie Jacobson / Pene Hodge

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