By conjugating proteins with a common pH-sensitive fluorescent label, fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC), and controlling the ionic strength, we provide a means to decrease the characteristic length scale of the total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) technique by two orders of magnitude. The usual characteristic length scale for TIRF is an optical length, specifically the evanescent wave penetration depth (on the order of 100 nm). In our experiments the penetration depth is replaced by the Debye screening length as the characteristic length scale. This is readily controlled to match the dimensions of an adsorbed protein layer (on the order of 1 nm). We achieve this length scale reduction by coupling the well-known pH-sensitivity of fluorescence emission by FITC-labeled proteins with the variation of electrostatic potential near a negatively charged surface. Using this fine-resolution TIRF capability in combination with scanning angle reflectometry, we find that lateral repulsions induce a dramatic reconfiguration of adsorbed lysozyme layers on negatively charged silica surfaces. This occurs as the surface concentration approaches the jamming limit for random sequential adsorption. The reconfiguration evidently optimizes electrostatic interactions in the adsorbed layer and decreases the effective excluded area per lysozyme. The decrease in effective excluded area allows adsorption to continue beyond the jamming limit to ultimately attain a hexagonal close packed monolayer of horizontally oriented lysozyme molecules. The adsorption kinetics switch abruptly from being transport-limited to surface-limited after the reconfiguration.