About the size of a small fist. Yeah, that’s not really a great way to describe the highly endangered Piping Plover, a fist. And it’s very unlikely you can get a plover to stand next to a fist on the sand. So then, when it comes to visual storytelling, especially when your audience doesn’t know birds, how do you say size? The bottom image is one of my preferred methods. While I don’t like all the empty sand, placing the plover centered and alone, small in the frame, it opens the door to wonder why such a cute, little bird is that way. If filling the frame with the small critter, some type of universal recognizable object for scale is another method. In this case, the bubbles from the surf. Solid critter photography is a challenge, and adding scale to the storytelling makes it even more so. But your story is stronger when the viewer doesn’t wonder, ” How big?”

The sun hadn’t broken the horizon at Stono Cnty Park when the chorus broke out across the marsh. The inky shadows in the tall grasses’ movement could be seen, chicken-sized shapes slowly moving about. The tide was rising, and the shy Clapper Rails were being forced from their seclusion. The sun pops out and in bands of light, the clapper is exposed. The range of light is over seven stops, which means the shadows will go black, with no detail. That’s contrasty light, it’s also their world, their story. Photographically, what do you do? Personally, I want those shadows to go black as that is their world. If they step into a ray of light, like the top photo, it says it all. The bottom, it tells a story as well but a different one. As visual storytellers, it’s upon us to make the call. Contrasty or storytelling?

A couple of lifetimes ago, my mentor told me I needed to see the mass shorebird migration in fall at Folly Beach. I didn’t have the means back then to make that trip, so I’m been doing it now. Ted’s photo showed a beach covered with little peeps, a birders’ paradise! This pass week I struggled to find just one bird each session to photograph. I was lucky, I did find one and, even more luckily, found a cooperative one like this Sanderling last evening. There, on the end of Sullivan’s Island, Fort Sumter off in the distance, this lone Sanderling spent time on a small stretch of beach foraging. Witness to its passing, there was NO WAY I was going to take a photo that said, “it was here,” but rather, it has to celebrate it was here! How to visually say that is the question? Lying on the sand, the rolling surf was placed in the background, waiting for the splash to create some sparkle. The Sanderling needed a portrait that would make folks stop, if just for a moment, and take note that it’s a survivor and carrying on the very long tradition of migration. The entire scenario is very depressing, the loss of so many of its cousins over the decades, had to pull out all the tricks so in one click, leave it with a positive spin.