How to Photograph landscapes with a Telephoto Lens

Hi everybody. This is Craig Tanner for The Mindful Eye and the Daily Critique. Today image was submitted by John, as an advanced photographer. John was not depth file in National park workshop so this is just a coincidental submission. John did take this picture in depth file in National Park and I believe this is done taste of view which is one of the big dramatic desert overlooks in the park. John shot this with the Canon 20D effect of focal length of 130 millimeters and an ISO 100 start down to F11 and expose the file for 1/400 of a second. One of the things I really like a lot about this image and it serve one of the take away from today’s critique, is this way of seeing the big landscape. So much of the time were sort of liking an either or scenario. The photographers either put on a wide lens and is working with sort of a foreground and a middle ground and background. In using the wide lens, a perspective distortion of the wide lens at lot of times maybe leading line to suggest the space from near to far or the photographer puts on a longer lens and goes out and slices out a section. That’s more two dimensional that’s far away. And John is doing something here, it's really beautiful. You just see this idea quite a bit in cinema, where John is using a longer focal length to telephoto focal length and using layers of information and using select the focus to suggest the idea of near to far. And really beautiful and just a way of saying to think about it’s difficult to do this. And one of the fun things about standing on a space like this, this overlook is the long one’s can become pretty easy to use just in terms of going out maybe abstracting a pattern on the desert for or maybe you just shoot a long shot that’s more two dimension, where you get part of the mountain and a cloud or some light on the mountains, back in here just a pattern study. This is harder to do because now we’re starting to work with multiple layers of information and trying to work with those in a way to say something. Make a point, can be difficult to get separation. John has done a really beautiful job here with the pretty long telephoto lens of really suggesting something that’s very close to the camera. This powerful ball and out to the middle ground and then the background of the mountains in the sky. Another thing I really love about this image, right away when I look at it is how ever John has achieve this whether it was on camera or some combination of in camera and digital editing. This image because of color and quality of the light, it has to me an other worldly feeling to it. And that’s a feeling that I get when I’m in depth alley. It’s a landscape that to me is already other whirly. So I’d like saying is sort of pushed in this direction and a lot of what’s happening for me in terms that feeling has to do with the white colors of being representing here so I’m enjoying that. And I just like the simplicity of this image. To me, this is where the main character in the story, the main subject. I’d like the way John, like I already mentioned work with the selective focus to get the main subject here to separate against the pretty simple pattern of the mountains and the background. Color is also helping to this, the difference between warm and cool. There is a great simplicity in terms of the other shapes and the image of this two shapes play off of each in a dynamic sort of symmetrical kind of way. These two triangles pushing against each other and then really what’s left is sort of the sky to come in and play off of the base of the images. Simple image, I’m also really enjoying what’s happening with all the different textures. Textures is helping the bush to separate, and I just like the way all these textures are playing off of each other in the image. When I start to think about a perfect quality variation for this image. There are two things that I think about. One of them has to do with the sky and the other has to do with the main subject for character in the story. I’d like to make this come forward a little bit more and look at several ways to potentially do that and the other thing I think about here is the sky. And the thing about sky is that it just have so much visual weight and so much of the time, the sky really have the potential to be busy and to become overwhelming. We start of with the fact that the top part of the image has a lot more visual weight than the bottom, because this is where we’re trained to go. The top of the page no matter were you are and the world we’re trained to go to the top of the page first whether we move left or right once we get there. Top of the page is very visually heavy because of gravities. It’s easier to go from the top to the button. Things that are on the top push down on everything else and they have literally a lot of visual weight because of gravity. And then, if that thing at top happens to be skies, skies are very powerful archetype and so much of the time the sky represents a lot of contrast. So much of the time they have a heartbreak from land to sky or sea to the sky, all of these things end up making this very, very visually powerful in the image. And so it’s easy for it to overwhelm and in this case when you add the fact that you’ve got low clouds that are in the shade and clouds behind that, that are more directly backlit. The contrast up here starts to become overwhelming and this is the part of the image for me that doesn’t quite go with the graphic quality of what I’m seeing down here. And I don’t really want to crop because I like what’s happening in the sky. And so, this is an image where one of the first things I would do is motion blur the sky. Motion blurring a sky in a traditional landscape where you got the difference between sky that you want to blur and maybe a very short mountain rage, other times can be hard to pull off because the way it motion blur and blurring in Photoshop in general and all works. But in this case, because of the selective focus, this is going to be easy to pull off. And the other reason why I would think about doing a dramatic blur in the sky, the image has already has an other whirly feel to it. So it’s an image I would be feeling pretty good about sort of pushing in a direction that’s not documentary or editorial. So I did a big motion blur on the sky or actually on the whole image and applied it locally with this mask. And then, I came in and did something that I do quite a bit when I’m playing around with maybe compositing skies or blending skies. I duplicate this layer and then I change in a blending mode to overlay and then I change the opacity to about 50% and I did that because I wanted to get more contrast into the sky, because there's a lot of contrast down in here, particularly in this bottom part and I’d like to play this off of this. Sort of the way John was already doing and so that’s that change. Give a little more pop to the sky. I came in and did I use saturation and mainly applied it to the bush as a subject matter which is and you can see that on the mask, there is the mask. On of the ways that I’m going to bring the bush forward, I came in and I’ve made more of a container for the top part of the image. Just painting on blank layer with black and soft light blending mode. And then, then I came in and did a levels adjustment to pop the seed heads of this bush out. And I want to show you my mask here just painting with zero hardness on the brush. To me, just this one technique, you know in terms of making adjustments and applying them locally just zero hardness on the brush and building up your changes slowly. Starting within the opacity of the brush somewhere around 10%. There so much that you can do in Photoshop. There so many people out there that are in the business of having to teach you tip after tip and tip after tip and tip after tip in Photoshop. Because that’s what their offering and it’s sort of like all these new version are some cool things that come along but we all sort get the sense that we’re being given more tools than we need, so that we’ll have to buy the latest, fastest computer, and so much of it is overkill. Sort of what’s that got us into the mess that we’re in now too much all the time. And just a few simple techniques in Photoshop that go back many, many, many versions. If you just want to edit the way we use to edit in the darkroom, which just managing color and managing value. Just the idea of adjustment layers and working with low opacities building of changes to the mask up slowly zero hardness on the brush can go so far in Photoshop. The next thing that I did was I just darken around the bush to try and make the bushes, main character in the story come forward and if you sit back from your monitor a little bit, hopefully you can it taking on a little bit more dimension and form. And then, I lowered the contrast to the bottom and the rocks just a little bit. Here’s were we started and here’s were we ended up. Just the different variation of a very beautiful image that John had submitted. I’d just love this way of seeing the landscape and it’s something to practice and try with your telephoto lenses. I want to say big thank you to John for sharing this beautiful landscape image. Thank you to you for being here on the Mindful Eyes Daily Critique.