Yesterday while laying on the flats watching the shorebirds in the surf, I wanted close-ups of the birds so I attached the 2X teleconverter to the Nikkor Z600mmPF lens, which provided a reach of 1200mm and put me effectively on top of even the smallest shorebirds. But, with the long focal length, sometimes when the small Sanderlings crossed in front of me, they often were too close and so beak or tail would be cut off. When they turned and headed straight at me, their profile was much smaller, more like a round ball. It finally dawned on me that I should try a vertical shot of a Sanderling to avoid cutting off bird parts and still get a closeup. In vertical format, their body would fill the vertical format and emphasize their roundness. Vertical didn’t work when the birds were further away so I had to time turning the lens to the vertical position to capture them before they got too close for the lens’s minimum focusing distance. This Sanderling is in breeding plumage so it isn’t its usual winter drab gray. I really like the results of my experiments with vertical framing. I’m going to keep trying to perfect my results.