Early in my photography career when I was living in St. Petersburg, Florida, back around 2010, I used to teach a lot of photography lessons because DSLR cameras were just starting to be bought and used by non-pro-photographers, i.e. enthusiasts and hobbyists, and who the heck could figure out how to use something with a dozen buttons on it? So a couple times a week I’d spent 2 hours with someone walking the streets of St. Pete teaching them my 5-stop process for shooting in manual mode while finding interesting things to make photos of.
Telephoto Dreamscape Views of Sand Dunes in Colorado
This is my second series of photos from Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado (wide angle first series here), this time featuring all images made with a telephoto lens (Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 G Master). You may think for landscape photography that automatically it’s best to use a wide angle lens. Many times that is the case, but when you are very far from the subject, even a very large subject like sand dunes, a telephoto lens can bring you in close, and produce a unique looking landscape image. As I was driving in to Sand Dunes National Park, I thought the sand dunes themselves looked fake, like CGI. There were this soft focus, creamy aberration before more solid, corporeal mountains. As I was leaving the park, I pulled over and took out the telephoto lens to capture these dreamscape like images. Tell me the sand dunes do not look like they were put into the photos as digitally created features?
Clouds like coral over the Sandia Mountains in New Mexico
Having been to remote northwest Rio Rancho, New Mexico at least a hundred times over the past 3+ years for rural land real estate photography, I have made hundreds and hundreds of photos of the Sandia Mountains using a 70-200mm lens, with this shot being made by the amazing Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 G Master lens. One might not think a telephoto lens is good for landscape photography, but if what you want to photograph is very far away, it will just get lost in a wide angle lens. On this particular afternoon, the clouds above the mountains rivaled the mountains themselves for drama. To me they look like undersea coral? What do you think?
Telephoto lens for mesa landscape photography in New Mexico
At the end of a rural land real estate shoot in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, near Abiquiu Lake, I noticed some mesas in the distance. I did not need to get photographs of them for the client, but one of my axioms is a real photographer always stops to get a photo if he/she sees an opportunity. So I got out my Sony a7 III with Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 G Master lens attached to get these shots, as the mesas were quite far away and they would look tiny in a wide angle lens one might normally think to use for landscape photography. The sun was going down, and there were good clouds in the sky, a recipe for near ideal landscape photography conditions.
At the end of a rural land photography shoot in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, I turned from the west after getting the required sunset shots to see the moon rising over the Sandia Mountains. I would come to learn that in a few days this would be a very rare full (blue) moon on Halloween night. To get unique views one must go to unique places, and not many go miles off road in the desert northwest of Rio Rancho wit a camera.
During a rural land real estate shoot in the desert NW of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, I had an unexpected guest show up, a very large tarantula! I was waiting for the sun to go down to get the last shots I make at these shoots, my signature HDRsunset shots, when coming down the road was this arachnid. I ran over to the Jeep to take out my other camera which had a 70-200mm lens on it to make these photos from a safe distance! The tarantula obliged quite well choosing to walk further down the road rather than turn into the desert. I am glad I saw this spider in the open and did not see it crawling on my foot when I was in the desert getting the sunset shot!
Using shallow depth of field and setting your focus point
Since I started Jason Collin Photography back in 2009, I have taught hundreds of people of all levels 1-on-1 photography lessons. In the course of that teaching I repeated some favorite photography advice. Here is one of them:
“Show me something I cannot see by just standing there.”
Another one is:
“A photographer can make something out of nothing.”
In the example photos in this blog post I had my Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART lens on my Sony a7 III full frame mirrorless camera. This lens is my favorite lens for making something out of nothing because the large f/1.4 aperture means I can easily create very shallow DoF (depth of field). Making a photo with a very shallow DoF is one of the easiest ways to make something out of nothing.
