Outdoor Photography How To

Shooting landscapes with a telephoto lens is a challenging yet rewarding experience. On the one hand, telephotos allow you to reimagine a landscape photograph by zeroing in on a few specific details to create an artistic composition. On the other hand, if you make a mistake in composing a scene with a long lens, it can ruin the image.

In the below video, landscape pro Mark Denney explains what he calls "the worst long lens composition mistake in landscape photography."

"Now I don't want to speak for anyone else, but resolving the following mistake was perhaps the single largest turning point for me when it came to the use of long lenses for my landscape photos," Denney says.

"It seems that the majority of the compositional information that's available for landscape photography usually revolves around the use of a wide-angle lens. And although both telephoto and wide-angle lenses share some commonalities with regards to best practices, they also possess quite a few differentiating factors as well."

In the tutorial Denney reviews the worst lens composition mistake in landscape photography and how best to resolve it.

"Now the interesting thing about this mistake is that it's actually made up of a series of smaller mistakes that when summed together creates a much larger issue," he explains. It's a problem he refers to as "scene stuffing," and in the clip he shares six different things that helped him overcome this composition issue.

The video is a follow up to last week's episode where he discussed four beginner telephoto mistakes to avoid in landscape photography. Check out the below and then go visit Denney's channel for more helpful landscape photography advice.