Quick Tips - Getting the most out of Your Tele Lens. Pro Secrets: how to use a telephoto lens for awesome landscapes. When you’re shooting landscape photography, the temptation is to reach for a wide-angle lens and try to include everything that your eye can see. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but for a more intimate view of the scenery you can add impact to your images by learning how to use a telephoto lens to pick out key features within the bigger picture. Images by Mark Hamblin By emphasising the most visually striking elements, you can add real impact to pictures and make them much stronger in terms of composition. When you use a telephoto lens for your landscapes, it’s a case of less is more. Keep it simple, cut the superfluous aspects and concentrate on what matters. There are no hard and fast rules for when to shoot long rather than wide, and you’ll often do both during a shoot.
The thing to look for is a strong feature that will form the focal point or primary visual impact of the picture. So what equipment do you need? Landscape photography: How to shoot great landscape pictures | Photo Techniques. When framing landscape pictures, rules will get you only so far. Niall Benvie describes how thoughtful composition can improve the power of your landscape photography. Landscape photography: Think about the foreground ‘The big foreground’ is a favourite compositional device among landscape photographers. With a wideangle lens fitted, the photographer moves in close to a foreground element, giving it prominence and exaggerating perspective. If the lens is (35 mm-equivalent) 20mm or wider, the effect is almost always impressive. Nevertheless, the technique is much over-used on subjects that don’t merit it. If you are drawing the viewer’s attention in the first place to the foreground, make sure that it is at least as interesting as what is in the background.
Many of these landscape shots fail because all the foreground has to offer is an insignificant pebble or dead stick while a fascinating mountain range or sky in the distance is diminished. Landscape photography: Follow the line.