Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs

Telephoto / long focal length

The telephoto effect

For other examples:

Philip-Lorca diCorcia p. 91

Here René Burri uses a telephoto lens to capture a group of men engaged in a kind of Ocean’s Eleven walk on top of a São Paulo skyscraper. Whatever the reason for their meeting, up here, no one risks being overheard.

This kind of shot is only possible with a telephoto lens, as the high magnification allows you to home in on small details from a much bigger scene. If shot using a shorter focal length, then these men would be an insignificant detail within a sprawling cityscape.

The telephoto lens causes something else to happen too. Notice how the space or depth in this image feels somehow odd.

Telephoto lenses give the illusion of compressing depth, ...