Using a Telephoto Lens to Compress Garden Scenes

Since gardens are beginning to blossom again after a long winter, I’m returning to the garden setting for this tip.

A telephoto lens is essential in garden photography for picking out pieces of a distant landscape or for macro work, and I often use one in conjunction with extension tubes or close-up filters. For landscape photography I use a zoom to pick out the garden details or to create a layering effect. On foggy days, I often look for how trees stack up with one another and how they lose detail as they recede into the mist; the layering on these days works exceptionally well.

Field of Poppies, grown for cutting near Silverton, Oregon in the summer

Field of Poppies, grown for cutting near Silverton, Oregon in the summer

When I spotted this field of poppies growing in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, I wanted to recreate the feeling I had of seeing such a multitude of flowers in one place. To do this, I chose a telephoto lens and crouched down a bit lower to overlap all the poppies. By using a zoom and compressing the scene, I was able to capture the feeling I had of seeing so many poppies in one place.

Wallflowers and grasses line the Willamette Valley in spring as a stately oak fills the background.

Wallflowers and grasses line the Willamette Valley in spring as a stately oak fills the background.

For this image of wallflowers in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, I used a telephoto lens to compress the scene for the multitude of flowers and also to keep the size of the tree large on the distant ridge. If I had used a wider-angle lens, the distant tree would only be a small pimple on the ridge face. A telephoto lens creates more drama in the scene.

Azaleas and rhododendrons at Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, Canada at sunset.

Azaleas and rhododendrons at Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, Canada at sunset.

While I was visiting Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, Canada I used my Canon 70-200mm telephoto lens to help frame the wonderfully lit tree with the yellow blossoms of the surrounding shrubs. The compression also created a layering effect for this image and compositionally a frame-within-a-frame which creates depth.

If you like this garden photography tip, I offer 99 more in my e-book “100 Tips to Improve Your Flower and Garden Photography.”

Look for my next garden book Visionary Landscapes due out this September on Tuttle Publishing.

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