One man has spent the last few years taking the photography of rodents to the next level.
Geert Weggen, 50, a Swedish Dutch national, began his journey to superstar squirrel snapper with a life-long love of comic books.
Mr Weggen, from Bispgarden in Sweden said: ‘Maybe it’s a strange thing to say, but I fell in love with graphic novels at a very young age. I absorbed them. It is storytelling through art. I am doing the same with my photos.’
Geert got his first darkroom when he was 16 and started taking photography courses before getting a job on youth newspaper until falling out of love with his camera – but said the passion for storytelling always stayed.
It was only much later that he decided to get back behind the lens.
He said: ‘I love nature. Its pureness, magic and liveness. Animals are honest and are only there because they trust. For me a direct contact with wildlife is filled with love and respect. That connection goes very deep. That bond can be very rare among people.’
And how does he always seem to capture that perfect moment in time? ‘Food. Mostly it is about that,’ he said. ‘If I did not have food they would not come. Although different birds and squirrels follow me and climb on me and visit me in my house, they would not do that if there was nothing to gain.
‘We use each other and we share each other.’
Geert now runs classes on how to snare that perfect snap and participants have direct contact with the animals.
‘They not only learn their behaviour and how to photograph them, they also learn to visualise them in scenes’, he said.
‘I call it ‘life in still life’. It is creating scenes with props or organic material and hiding food in the right places and waiting for the squirrels to come.
‘Most of my workshops are planned when the young squirrels are born.’
Geert thinks its their behaviour and similarities to use that make them such suitable subjects.
‘They are beautiful’, he continued. ‘Such nice colours and fluffy long hair on their ears. The main thing is that they can do many things humans can do. They can stand straight, they can hold something, like using hands, beside that their size makes it easier to work with miniature props, flowers and plants.’
Despite the adorable nature of the photos, and the many comments he says he receives about how funny they are, the pictures are not intended to be comedic.
‘That is not meant. I see my self not as a comical man. I have always been a fantasist, a dreamer.
‘Most of the time I saw things that where not there according the people around me. I would say they where wrong.
‘The world is a big place for dreaming and fantasy. It is one big wonder. Ideas come whole the time and it seems never to stop.
‘When I wake up, or look at the squirrels, see a object the ideas come. It is like a stream of stardust. Sparkling around and I and the squirrels get touched by it.’
