How to Shoot Landscapes - Use Tele-Zoom Lenses

Use Tele-Zoom Lenses

Use a telephoto lens and the viewer has the sense of being at your shoulder, of being involved in the scene. In the absence of a close foreground, he or she feels more like an observer rather than a participant. But that is not necessarily a bad thing: these long-range pictures often have a less literal feel to them - this is not, after all, how we see landscape - and therefore offer more scope for personal interpretation.

These are landscapes in summary: the photographer selects elements that represent the whole, and in doing so, paring away uninteresting or irrelevant parts of the scene.

A telephoto also brings the advantage of compressing perspective, reducing the apparent distance between near and distant. This is a boon if you want to abstract certain parts of the landscape and represent them as a pattern. If, however, you want to maintain some sense of depth you will need to rely on light and shade or topographic features - such as overlapping hill slopes - to suggest three dimensions.

Scots pine forest before mid-summer dawn, Abernethy, Scotland.
1/2sec @ f/11, ISO 50


Waves rolling into Rackwick Bay, Orkney, Scotland.
1/60sec @ f/11, ISO 50