Narrow your focus
I visited Artist Point and Huntoon Point this weekend but was shut out by the weather yet again. Since I have no photos to share, I decided to write this post which I’ve thought about for a little while now. One bit of photographic advice that you’ll hear about in landscape photography is shooting with a telephoto lens. Basically, you’re focusing (no pun intended) on some specific portion of a larger scene. I’ve read this advice numerous times before but I’ve never seen this concept illustrated so here’s my attempt to do just that!
I’ve selected three different examples where I’ve come away with some telephoto photos. For each example, I also have some wide angle shots which will provide some overall context. Let’s start with a photo I took a couple years ago on my first trip to Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. This waterfall is located along the Johnson Canyon trail and is situated a bit downstream of the Upper Falls:
This photo is taken at a 24mm focal length (on an APS-C sensor) and a photo that can stand on its own merits. This shot is actually the first one I took when I came upon this scene. As I’m prone to do, however, I sit down and study the scene in front of me. Eventually, I was struck by the complementing colors of the rock and long exposure trails of the white water. Through some iterations, I eventually came across my final scene:
Now let’s look at the original scene with a rough overlay of the area that the telephoto shot covers:
Next up is photo which has been one of my most popular. It was taken one spring at the Mount Baker Ski Area in the North Cascades of Washington State. As you can see, I started out with a wide angle shot of this weathered snag with Mount Shuksan in the background. On the right hand side in the background is a peak which has the local name of Hemispheres:
This photo was taken around 11am and the sun was still rising in the sky. The slopes of Hemispheres attract many backcountry skiers and snowboarders and, in this light, you can see why. The slopes are full of rollovers and undulations. Eventually, I was attracted to one small patch of trees and the combination of light and shadows at the transition to a steeper section of slope. The final scene was this:
Once again, let’s look at the overall scene along with an overlay highlighting the telephoto shot’s extent:
My last example also comes from the Mount Baker Ski Area vicinity. Last spring, I hiked into an overview of the White Salmon Creek valley and Mount Shuksan. I created this panorama and converted it to black and white:
Would you believe I got two additional photos out of the area represented by that panorama? Let’s look at the two additional shots:
Finally, let’s look at the panorama one more time along with the overlays for the two telephoto shots:
So there are three examples of a “wide” landscape scene hiding additional compositions in plain sight. The only thing missing is your vision and your telephoto lens. The key is being able to recognize when a scene in front of you has that depth and finer details and that’s something that I believe you’ll develop with time. Hopefully this post has shed some more light on the concept of using telephoto lenses in landscape photography!
