Piping Plover captured by Z 9 / Z600f4TC w/Z2x
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?”
Piping Plover captured by Z 9 / Z600f4TC w/Z2x