#44 · Sep 13–17 · White Dew
Wagtails call
鶺鴒鳴
Sekirei naku · Wagtails call
It took ninety minutes of waiting for a fraction of a second to arrive.
The season
鶺鴒鳴 · Sekirei naku
Wagtails call.
The forty-fourth kō belongs to Hakuro — White Dew, the early threshold of autumn, when the heat has loosened and the year becomes more alert to small movement and sound.
In the traditional Japanese calendar, this is the moment when wagtails are noticed by their calls.
The season does not describe a grand migration or a dramatic change in weather. It marks something lighter and more fleeting: a bird present in the landscape, a quick body on stone or riverbank, a sharp call that makes the season suddenly feel inhabited.
After dew has made the world visible, sound enters. The year begins to speak.
September 13–17 · Hakuro · White Dew
Field note · Munich
Flaucher, Munich · September 2026
This image needed a different kind of patience.
Before the photograph came the scouting: looking for the right stretch of water, the right bank, the right position and the possibility that a wagtail might appear at all.
At the Flaucher, the scene finally came together. Then came the waiting.
For around ninety minutes, I stayed with the river and watched the rhythm of the place — camera ready, waiting for a moment that might never repeat itself in quite the same way again.
When the wagtail arrived, everything happened quickly.
The final frame was photographed with a Sigma BF and the Sigma 100–400mm F5–6.3 DG DN OS | Contemporary, using burst shooting to capture the bird in the brief instant just before landing.
A small amount of post-processing followed afterwards.
But the photograph itself was made there: at the edge of the river, in the waiting, and in the fraction of a second when motion became form.
In the field
Waiting at the Flaucher, Munich — long before the final image arrived.
The stage
The stretch of river where Season 44 finally came into focus.
Revisited
The original kō speaks simply of wagtails calling. That simplicity is deceptive.
To photograph a season like this is not merely to illustrate a bird. It is to ask what kind of attention the old calendar is training.
Season 44 is about recognising a short-lived conjunction: a place, a time of day, a behaviour, a sound, a body in motion, and the readiness to respond when all of it briefly aligns.
That is why this photograph belongs naturally within 72 Seasons Revisited.
I am not recreating Japan in Bavaria. I am testing whether a centuries-old way of noticing can still sharpen the eye in a different landscape — here, along the Isar in Munich.
This time, it did. Not through a symbolic substitute, but through a living encounter.
The season gave the cue.
The river gave the stage.
The bird gave the image.
44 / 72
Three photographs made.
Sixty-nine observations still ahead.
72 seasons. 72 photographs. One year. One edition.
Notice where you are
What announces itself first where you are — shape, light, or sound?
A bird call from somewhere just out of view.
Movement at the edge of water.
A sudden landing.
A brief flash of life that changes the entire scene.
Not every seasonal shift is quiet.
Some arrive as a voice.