How to Shoot Portraits of the Sea With a 100-400mm Lens (What I Learned From William Patino)

How to Shoot Portraits of the Sea With a 100-400mm Lens (What I Learned From William Patino)

Most photographers point a wide angle at the ocean and call it a day. I get it. The drama is right there, the horizon is gorgeous, and wide lenses are forgiving. But I kept looking at my seascape shots and feeling like something was missing. They looked like postcards, not photographs. It wasn’t until I watched William Patino work a coastal break with a 100-400mm that something clicked for me. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube before or after reading this, because seeing the actual wave action he’s working with puts the technique in context.

How to Use a Telephoto Lens for Landscape Photography (And Why It Changes Everything)

How to Use a Telephoto Lens for Landscape Photography (And Why It Changes Everything)

Most landscape photographers reach for their widest lens by default. I did the same thing for years. Wide angle felt “epic,” and telephoto felt like something you pulled out for wildlife or sports. Then I started paying closer attention to photographers who were coming back from the same locations I’d shot a dozen times with images that looked completely different from mine. They weren’t finding better light. They were using a longer lens and finding smaller, tighter stories inside the big scene I’d been trying to capture in one frame.