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With our critter photography, grabbing the heart strings when it comes to mammals in my instances comes down to the ears. Moose, bears, coyotes, rabbits, nearly any mammal with largish ears use them in multiple ways. The first and most important is simply to listen in to the world around them. They often hear things long before they see them. If you spend time watching them, their ears pivot like a radar dish listening for sounds. They are very defined tools that serve them well. As this Desert Cottontail is demonstrating, listening to her young in the grasses kept her attention and ears moving.
These same mammals use their ears to converse with others of the same species what they are thinking. Deer are a great example of seeing this in action when a herd reacts to the alpha female’s alert. Her ears will go to attention and almost point in the direction of the alarm. And while we don’t know what they are thinking, we subconsciously pick up on the orientation of the ear and apply our own human emotions to them. What the ears imply can be used by us in the storytelling that lead to grabbing the viewer’s heart strings. Not that we can control the position of the ears, but we can control when we go click or the final image we put out from our shoot. This very subtle aspect of mammal photography is a very important one that cannot be ignored. So next time you’re photographing that mammal, remember the ears have it.
