What Three Lenses Actually Cover: A Working Photographer's Breakdown of Focal Length Strategy for Landscapes

What Three Lenses Actually Cover: A Working Photographer's Breakdown of Focal Length Strategy for Landscapes

There’s a question I hear at every workshop I run out of Bend, and I’d bet it’s the same question landing in every landscape photographer’s inbox right now: what lens should I be shooting with? I used to give a short answer. After twenty years of early mornings and hard miles with a pack on my back, I’ve learned that the short answer is almost always wrong. The better question is whether your lens kit is limiting the images you can see before you even raise the camera.

Pack Every Lens: How Focal Length Transforms a Single Landscape Location

Pack Every Lens: How Focal Length Transforms a Single Landscape Location

There’s a trap I fell into early in my career, and I still see it happen with photographers in my workshops. You arrive at a famous location, shoot the obvious composition with the lens already on your camera, and leave thinking you’ve covered it. One frame, one focal length, one version of a place that millions of people have already photographed. It’s not a bad shot. It’s just an incomplete one.