For most of my life, wildlife photography meant scale. Tigers. Lions. Elephants. The kind of animals you travel across continents to see. Most of my early experiences came from safaris in India, where everything felt larger than life.
Then I moved to Boulder for grad school.
The opportunities changed. Research took over most of my time, and while I still made trips out to photograph, they became less frequent. Wildlife photography became something I did when I could, not something I planned my days around.
One day, I noticed a squirrel in my backyard. Nothing unusual at first. Just another backyard animal, running along the fence, disappearing into the ivy, coming back again. But there was something about the way it moved. Curious. Restless. Almost playful. It felt like there was a shot there.
I was reminded of an image I had seen from Isaac Spotts. A black bear, close, intimate, at eye level. It didn’t feel like a distant wildlife shot. It felt personal.
I wanted to try something like that.
It was a rainy day. The light was soft, the ivy in the backyard looked fresh, and everything had this muted, calm tone to it. I spent some time just watching. Waiting. Eventually, with a bit of patience and a peanut or two, I got the shot I had in mind.
That was it. I was hooked.
What started as a one-off attempt quickly turned into something else. I found myself spending more time in the backyard, watching these squirrels, learning their behavior, figuring out where they moved, when they felt comfortable, what caught their attention.
It became less about the shot, and more about understanding them.
On one particular day, I decided to try something different. I set up my long lens on a tripod, right where the squirrels usually climbed down from the fence. The idea was simple. Get a close, eye-level portrait as they stepped into frame.
At first, nothing happened. They stayed on the fence, watching from a distance. The camera was new. Suspicious. Not to be trusted.
I waited.
After about an hour, one of them came down. Slowly. Cautiously. This was a squirrel I had seen before. Slightly more curious than the others. I had started to recognize it. I call him Patrick.
He didn’t run. He didn’t dart away. Instead, he walked up to the camera and started inspecting it. The tripod. The lens. Everything.
I wasn’t ready.
I grabbed my second camera, almost scrambling, and managed to get into position just in time
And that was the shot.
Over the past few months, these backyard encounters have turned into something I didn’t expect. A small, quiet project. A different kind of wildlife photography. Less about scale, more about proximity. Less about chasing, more about staying still.
If you look closely enough, there’s a lot happening right in front of you.
Turns out, you don’t always have to go far to find something worth photographing.
