Good Backdrops

One nice thing about a telephoto lens is its narrow angle of focus. Wide angle lens will take in everything out in front of you, but if there is something in the background that would cause a distraction, it can be difficult to exclude it. That is where a telephoto lens comes into its own.

You might get the impression these photos were taken in a marsh, but they were not. They were taken at a little puddle by the side of the road. When you see the background, you might infer that there is much more to it when in fact you are looking at all there is.

The narrowness of the field of view can be an advantage as you can wait until the subject is in just the right spot to take the picture. This was actually a very short stretch of trees the geese were passing by.

Something that is a little more difficult to capture is a grouping like this where every head is visible. You have to take off points when a photo has a goose body where the head is hidden behind another goose body. Sometimes that is the only thing that causes you to reject an otherwise nice picture.