Long shots. Taking scenery shots with a telephoto lens

We used to think that a beautiful landscape can and should be shot with a wide-angle lens. 14mm is great, you can make a “hard” foreground to engage the viewer. 20 or 24 mm is also good. Focal lengths over 50mm for landscape are generally not considered. But a telephoto lens and even a supertelescope can open up entirely new and interesting perspectives in landscape photography.

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/5.6, 1/1600, ISO 250

See the world through a super telephoto lens. The landscape becomes flat, but you see the lines and graphics of nature. You have to look for those lines, the way the highlights work and the way they interact

If you decide to try taking scenery pictures with a Nikon SLR, you will have to give up the usual ways of taking scenery pictures. A wide angle zoom stretches the space, and lets you create volume by accentuating the lines and making the landscape distinctly divided into plans. A telephoto works just the opposite – it compresses the space and takes away the volume of the image. Therefore it is better to refuse transferring volume and begin to work with such a landscape not as with a photo, but as with a graphic.

Such work requires great attention to detail, knowledge of the laws of composition and the psychology of perception. For starters, you should forget forever the rule of thirds, perhaps the most dreaded and useless rule that magazines and photography courses have popularized for years. Placing objects on some magic lines or power points..

Of course, it would be great if our perceptions were so primitive that these laws would work. But unfortunately or fortunately, we are much more complicated than that. Objects placed anywhere in the frame can only work if they have a counterweight – a clear but somewhat less contrasting object in the opposite part of the frame. Advocates of the rule of thirds in proving the work of their theory usually cite shots in which this very counterbalance is. Such a shot works and looks harmonious, but the thirds have a relative relation to this harmony.

Look for lines that are your main guide in the frame they don’t create volume, but they add dynamics to the frame. The grid of lines draws the viewer’s eye in, forcing him to study the frame. But not only diagonals work well in the composition, so do horizontal lines, which introduce psychological steps into the frame, as well as arabesques-curves, which a person follows with his eyes regardless of their direction and position in the frame.

Try to find the main character. It could be a lone yellow tree among the trees with fallen leaves, a cabin at the foot of the mountains, a lone traveler on the trail, or a car on the road. The hero isn’t always necessary in this kind of shot, but it can give some new meaning to the shot.

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/5.6, 1/320, ISO 125

Bright spots and repetition of such elements can create an interesting rhythm in the frame. Very often you can condense and fit into a frame such objects only with the help of a TV set which visually compresses the space

Try to wait for interesting weather conditions. Low cloud cover and fog bring tonal perspective into the frame, hoarfrost creates an interesting effect of muted colors, torn cloud cover allows you to catch light spots on the mountains. Sometimes these vagaries of weather create a scene where normally there wouldn’t be one at all.

As for the technique, you need only a medium-sized TV for this kind of shooting. The lens with the focal length up to 200 millimeters will help you catch a part of the landscape, but not a small enough one. And focal lengths from 300 to 600 millimeters allow you to take some of the picture out of context. With these focal lengths you can shoot a small piece of the mountainside on the opposite side of the gorge, take a picture of a fragment of rock with the river running through it, or take a picture of a small piece of a canyon. Abstract photos like these are great for modern interiors. You can also entertain your social media followers with an unexpected guessing game: show a very close-up like this and ask what’s in the picture. A great way to activate your audience.

As I said, focal lengths of 300 mm or more can be considered ideal for this kind of photography. But lenses with such focal lengths are heavy and bulky, dragging them up into the mountains is no easy task. But today, there’s a compromise option in Nikkor’s lens lineup – the AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, which will replace both standard and super telephoto lenses on the trail, has an acceptable weight and optical quality. All the photos in this photographic school were taken with it.

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/7.1, 1/400, ISO 500

Many landscapes abound in interesting detail. They look like little strokes in the background, but if you shoot them with a TV, you can build an interesting shot around them

Telephoto lenses with this focal length are very picky about vibrations. Shoot handheld at shutter speeds slower than 1/500 sec. on them is extremely difficult. The built-in stabilizer in many such lenses helps in part. I would still recommend shooting these kinds of things with a tripod.

But even a slight bounce from the mirror lift would give you a distinct shake in the final picture. That’s why when using tripods with lenses of this focal length, be sure to fix the tripod and the tripod head on the tripod as best you can, not the camera itself but the lens with the tripod foot, and set the delayed release and delayed shutter mode. The first will give time for the vibrations after pressing the shutter button to subside, the second will give time for the vibrations from the mirror lift to subside.

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/9.0, 1/25, ISO 250

Not only the diagonals, but also the horizontal lines can create an interesting rhythm in the frame. Look for lines like these that create a staircase of sorts in the frame

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/5.6, 1/1250, ISO 250

A person in the frame will help emphasize the scale of the landscape

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/5.6, 1/2000, ISO 500

You don’t always have to close the aperture to get a completely clear shot. Sometimes a blurred background can create an interesting effect. Keep in mind that the depth of field DOF depends not only on the aperture, but also on the focal length of the lens the longer the focal length, the narrower the DOF and the distance to the subject you are focusing on the closer the subject, the narrower the DOF

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/8.0, 1/3200, ISO 160

You don’t have to shoot during sunrise and sunset only. Sometimes you can get interesting shots at a time that many landscape photographers consider completely off-limits. This shot was taken at ten o’clock in the morning, when the sun was already quite high. But it was this hard sun that made the sky piercingly blue, and the greenery and blooming poppies especially vivid

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/8.0, 1/2500, ISO 800

Wait for the light. A glimpse of sunlight through heavy clouds can change the landscape beyond recognition

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/11, 1/1000, ISO 640

Include familiar objects in the frame – buildings, cars. It helps to show the scale

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/7.1, 1/500, ISO 200

Look for lonely objects like bushes, trees, buildings. They can add meaning to your shots or just break up a monotonous scene

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/9.0, 1/200, ISO 640

Watch the lines. Here I was able to rhyme the profile of the dune with the shape of the cirrus clouds. I shot a few frames and stitched together a panorama to get this effect. When shooting panoramas it’s very important to fix the focus and exposure, so they don’t change from frame to frame

AF-S NIKKOR 80-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 G ED VR, f/7.1, 1/320, ISO 1000,

Tripod shooting with time-lapse mode and deferred shutter

Keep your eyes peeled for distance. In any weather and at any time of year. Subjects for such meditative paintings are often scattered somewhere on the very horizon