How to Use Telephoto Lenses to Simplify Composition

Many photographers buy telephoto lenses to help them make photos of distant subjects like wildlife. But another way to use them is to simplify the composition of the your photos.

Compared to wide-angles, telephoto lenses help you simplify composition in three ways.

1. By excluding the background. Telephoto lenses have a narrow angle of view, which means you get less background in the photo. This helps you can crop out distracting elements like strong colors and bright highlights.

2. By defocusing the background. The shallower depth of field makes it easier to use a wide aperture to throw the background out of focus. Prime lenses are great for this thanks to their wide aperture settings.

3. By compressing the background. The way telephoto lenses compress perspective and bring the background closer to the subject is another way of simplifying composition.

What is a telephoto lens?

There’s no precise definition of a telephoto lens, but as a guide you can think of any lens with a focal length of 80mm or more as being a telephoto lens. That’s for a full-frame camera, so that’s about 50mm with an APS-C camera or 40mm with a Micro Four-thirds camera.

Lenses towards the lower end of that range, like my Fujinon 56mm f1.2 lens (APS-C) are called short telephoto lenses. Lenses with focal lengths of 300mm or more are known as super telephoto lenses.

This definition includes the longer focal lengths of zoom lenses. If you have an 18-55mm kit lens for an APS-C camera, then you can get the benefits listed in this article by setting it to 55mm.

Telephoto lenses and field of view

The diagrams below show the difference between a wide-angle lens (left) and a telephoto lens (right) when it comes to angle of view (also called field of view).

The red dot in both diagrams shows the subject (like a person in a portrait). With a wide-angle lens (left) the subject is closer to the lens and the wide angle of view means that it includes more of the background.

With a telephoto lens (right) the subject is further from the lens and the narrow angle of view means that it includes less of the background. This in turn makes it easier to simplify the composition by carefully selecting which part of the background you want in the frame.

Another way of thinking of it is that wide-angles are lenses of inclusion, and telephoto lenses are lenses of exclusion.

Composition with telephoto lenses

Here are some examples of how using telephoto lenses affects composition.

Using telephoto lenses to blur the background

I made the photo below with an 85mm lens (full-frame camera). I focused on the lizard’s eye and set the aperture to f1.8 to make the background go completely out of focus. The lens helped me simplify the composition by using a wide aperture to blur the background. The narrow angle of view also helped me compose the photo without distractions in the background.

Using telephoto lenses to compress perspective

For the next photo I used the same 85mm lens (full-frame) to make a photo of a Chinese temple silhouetted by the early morning sun. Using a telephoto lens pulls the hills behind the temple closer, and flattening the perspective. This combined with the evocative lighting, helps create a photo with a simplified, graphic composition.

Using telephoto lenses in busy situations

Telephoto lenses can also help you simplify the composition in busy situations. For example, I made the portrait below at the Auckland Lantern Festival. It was a busy event and there were lots of people in the background.

I couldn’t do anything about that, but I could use a telephoto lens (56mm, APS-C) to exclude as much of the background as possible, and a wide aperture (f2.8) to push the background out of focus.

Using telephoto lenses at zoos

Zoos are a great place for making photos of animals and birds that you might otherwise never get to see in your life. The problem is they are usually behind bars or glass, which makes it hard to get a decent photo.

The solution is to use a telephoto lens at its widest aperture. Move in close to the bars or glass and they’ll go so far out of focus they’re invisible in the final image. That’s exactly what I did to make the photo below.

Creating a cinematic effect with telephoto lenses

Telephoto lenses are used a lot in the movies. I assume it’s partly for practical reasons, so there’s a reasonable working distance between the cameras and the actors. But it’s also effective creatively as telephotos are great for pulling the background in close to the actors and creating dramatic compositions.

You can use this idea with your photos. I made the photo below with a telephoto zoom set to 150mm (APS-C). Using a long focal length pulled in the walls of the ancient South American city close to the woman and her child, creating a dramatic, cinematic effect. I even cropped it to a panorama to help you imagine it as a scene up on the big screen.

Telephoto lenses in the landscape

You can also use telephoto lenses to simplify composition in the landscape. In the scene below, for example, I had a sunset that lit up a small part of the sky, combined with interesting but distant silhouettes and a lack of foreground interest. The solution was to use a telephoto lens to zoom in on the silhouettes and exclude the boring parts of the scene.

Telephoto lenses and portrait composition

Telephoto lenses are also great for portrait photography. They let you take a simple approach to composition. In the two portraits below, for example, I used an 85mm lens (full-frame) set to a wide aperture (f2.8 in both cases). I moved in close enough to to include the models’ head and shoulders. As you can see, the background in both portraits is blurred and there’s very little of it. You don’t need an amazing location to make portraits like these – just a willingness to experiment and see what the background looks like when it’s out of focus and behind your model.

Telephoto lenses in documentary photography

You can also use telephoto lenses in documentary photography to help simplify cluttered backgrounds. You can see that idea at work in the photos below, all made with a 56mm lens (APS-C). The first shows a blacksmith at work. For the next two photos I moved in closer to create images with even simpler compositions. Together they work well together as a set.

Conclusion

There are many ways to simplify the composition of your photos but using a telephoto (or normal) lens is one of the easiest. These lenses are a great tool when you want to create strong, simple images without distractions and lots of impact.

100 Composition Assignments

These assignments come from my new ebook 100 Composition Assignments. It has 100 assignments just like the ones in this article, to light a fire and help you improve your compositions skills.

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