Ask any photographer what lens you should buy for landscape photography, and the answer is almost always wide-angle. But challenge this conventional wisdom. Are there any good reasons to use a telephoto lens for landscape photography?
Telephoto lenses, often associated with sports and wildlife photography, have a unique potential in landscape photography that has yet to be fully explored. By using a telephoto lens, you can change the traditional perspective on landscapes, literally seeing them from a new perspective—pun intended. This approach challenges traditional wide-angle landscape shots, offering a unique perspective on landscape photography that inspires you to experiment and explore new horizons.
What is a Telephoto Lens?
A lens with a focal length greater than 70 mm is a telephoto lensand a lens with a focal length of 300mm or greater is a super telephoto. Telephoto lenses allow you to bring your subject closer to you, separating it from its surroundings and creating a more intimate feel. Telephoto lenses are great for wildlife and sports photography; they can also be a great choice for landscape photography.
Upgrade your components with compression
You may have heard of compression when using a telephoto lens. What is compression? Compression blends things together; the background and foreground will be closer together in the photo than they actually are. Compression as a compositional tool will create more interesting photos by creating layers in your image.
Minimalism
Simplicity can be king. While we sometimes like to create images with complex compositions, taking a simpler route can save us from frustration and the urge to give up. Minimalism will simplify the background, which can create a visually interesting photo. It also helps the viewer focus on the subject and tell the story you are trying to capture!
Suboptimal weather conditions
Have you ever had a bad day, especially when it comes to the sky? When the sky lacks texture, detail or interest, our job as landscape photographers becomes ten times more difficult. Using a wide angle lens will allow us to capture a beautiful landscape. This will include the sky and all the details of the landscape. If the sky lacks interest and detail, so will our image. Using a telephoto lens will allow us to focus on other parts of the landscape besides the whole landscape, including the sky!
Clearing up the chaos
We often look at a complex and chaotic scene in our viewfinder. We know what we are supposed to create, but we often need help figuring it out. Taking the telephoto lens out of our pocket helps to bring order to the scene. It allows us to start looking at the scene with a more focused approach, as the telephoto lens gives us a narrower perspective. This allows our brain to make sense of the complex scene, allowing us to focus.
Focus on the light
Our number one goal is always to find the best light! A telephoto lens can help us focus on the scene and its best light. We might see a flare of light that highlights our subject or even a backlit subject. Doing so helps us draw the viewer’s eye to the subject.
Take pictures of the details
We can think of macro lenses for capturing detail shots in landscape photography. Telephoto lenses can also be your best friend for these shots. Sometimes we need to capture detail shots, but the macro lens has a too short focal length and for some reason, we can’t get closer to our subject. Telephoto lenses will allow us to achieve the look we are looking for!
Create unique and special photos
In a world where billions of photos are shared every day, it can feel like you’re lost in a sea of photos. You might be visiting an epic location that has most likely been photographed before. Chances are it was shot with a wide-angle lens, but was it shot with a telephoto lens? Using a telephoto lens has many advantages and allows you to create more dramatic and unique photos that have most likely never been taken before, allowing for more unique and different photos.
Final thoughts
Finally, we will always think of wide angle lenses for landscape photography. Telephoto lenses will allow us to create more unique and different images, and will open up a whole new world for you as a photographer. Remember to pull out your telephoto lens the next time you go on a landscape adventure!
