Zoom Into The Land

I probably could have used more glass, but that little cloud cut me some slack making the image. Some of the best landscapes are just slivers of the overall scene. They catch our attention but in taking the photo, often there is something we’ve read that says you need to shoot landscapes wide, close the lens down to its smallest f/stop, and filter like crazy. When the image pops up on the computer, it leaves you short of the feeling you had when you were standing there. That’s when you know you should have zoomed in!

I say zoom as that is typically the lens landscape photographers have in their kit. For me, it’s the 180-400VR and the Z70-200f2.8. In this case, the Z70-200f2.8 and the Z1.4x were all I had in my bag at the time. Heading up Bear Creek Road, I pulled over as soon as I could safely and jumped out. The whole range was gorgeous but it was the light on these crags that truly caught my eye. That’s when I needed all the reach I had with me. The detail highlighted by the light in the scene shot with a lens like the Z14-24 would have been too small, you wouldn’t have known the subject or its story. Next time you’re arranging the elements in the viewfinder and the detail just doesn’t smack you right between the eyes, remember to zoom into the land!