My not-so-new-anymore job, GEO-Tag der Natur,’s goal is to help people see nature around us through different eyes. In order to enrich people’s lives, but also in order to encourage and empower people to protect nature, for which a necessary first step is to start noticing everything that is there and worth protecting. We do that by providing opportunities for interactions between laypeople and experts (my personal favourite biologists? Definitely @nena_weiler & @fraubioke!), who then engage in some sort of activity related to biodiversity together.

And we see positive effects of all these interactions all the time within the project, but now it has also invaded my personal life: Instead of focussing the picture (or even my attention!) on the waves like I usually do, I climbed where I should probably not have been climbing and took pictures of a butterfly! And another insect! And more butterflies!

And even though I am still more interested in waves and physics than in critters, I love how seeing the world with different eyes is enriching my life and making me take different kinds of pictures than what I am used to. It’s nice to see that my project does have these kinds of effects, not only on our intended audience, but also on myself (and, self-reportedly, also my colleagues!), and I can’t wait to get into creating an even more awesome event for next year!