Hanno Müller Photography

It started on the Wadden Sea in 2021. Flat water, a horizon that moves and more birds than anyone can count. Hanno Müller went back often enough that the place began to make sense, and later led excursions there for the Dutch Waddenvereniging.

Today he lives in Berlin and photographs mostly in the north-east, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with the same habit of returning to a place until it gives something.

Own research, own hides, no paid set-ups. Almost every picture here was worked for: finding out where a species is, when the light is right, and then sitting still long enough to be forgotten.

The birds come first. He keeps his distance, works from camouflage so that nothing notices him, and leaves rather than pushes when a bird shows it has had enough. No picture is worth a disturbed nest or a bird that stops feeding.

He began with a Nikon D7200 and now shoots an OM System OM-1. Files are developed in darktable and Neat Image. Editing means white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation and sharpness, nothing more. No retouching, no masks, no composites.

Like being part of it rather than looking at it. Sitting still in a landscape long enough, you stop being a visitor: the birds carry on, the light changes, and you become part of the surroundings.

It empties the head. There is nothing to solve out there and only one thing to do, and the weather and the waiting are part of why it works. The attention sharpens, and it stays sharp for days afterwards, in places that have nothing to do with birds.

Mostly it puts something back. A morning outside is worth more than a morning of rest, and the effect lasts: the battery is fuller on the way home than it was on the way out. Nature does that quietly and without being asked, which is reason enough to keep going out.