On September 12, 2020, I started as a participant in the mentorship program of Nature Photography by famous Dutch photographer Bart Siebelink. I wrote about this mentorship earlier on, see the first blogpost on this LINK.
The third meeting was online on October 31, 2020 and the fourth meeting also online on November 13, 2020. One of the assignments for these days was to present a moodboard, created as an intuitive collage for the end project. So ideas could be presented with images, drawings and texts that relate to one another. A moodboard helps to bring order in all thoughts about a photography project.My moodboard represents the colors of the forest, mostly in Autumn, relating to wildlife. My focus would be on red squirrels, how they live alongside other wood animals; combining this in a contradiction between action and stillness. The colors in my moodboard form an interconnectedness between the images.
With my camera I document all the wildlife that comes to visit within the changing landscape of the forest near the wildlife hide (Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands). I go there every month since June 2020. The red squirrels (three in total) caught my attention during an earlier visit when they tried to catch the nuts from the water surface. They make all kinds of jumps, and also run and swim in the water.
Red squirrels are quite common in the Netherlands. But I did hear that they are Near Threatened in England, Wales and Northern Ireland due to the introduction of grey squirrels from America. To me, red squirrels are great examples of living vividly; jumping and running, digging and exploring. My images are an ode to the red squirrel, hoping they won't vanish from the precious forests as they certainly are an icon for a healthy forest!
