Your digital camera has a powerful zoom lens. I have never seen it, but I bet it does. In fact, when you bought it, one of the first things the salesman mentioned was the magnification power of the zoom lens. It is one of the 'must have' features of a modern digital camera.

A powerful telephoto lens is terrific, and essential if you are shooting lots of sports photography, wildlife photography, or any photography that requires you to capture your subject from a distance. But with all the marketing that goes on around telephoto power, you could be forgiven for believing there is little value in a good wide-angle lens.

This is simply not the case. In fact, if you take a lot of travel photos, you may find that your powerful telephoto rarely gets a workout. As a landscape photographer, I use my wide-angle lens a lot more. I can tell you right now that even though the wide-angle lens makes everything smaller, it can create images with massive impact if you use it well.

So here are my five tips for creative photography with a wide-angle lens.

Wide-Angle Photography Tip #1. It Really Is A Wide Angle. When using a larger lens, you narrow your field of view considerably, so if you focus on a subject in the foreground you really don't capture much of the background. On the other hand, with a wide-angle lens you capture a much wider field of view. Your foreground subject may still be the focus of the image, but you can make use of the background to add interest to the picture as well.

As a result, your picture can tell more of a story. Instead of a photo that says "Here is a shot of my kids" your photo can say "Here is a shot of my kids at the beach, you can see what a beautiful day it was and I managed to capture a sailboat going by as well."

Wide-Angle Photography Tip #2. Depth Of Field. The wide-angle lens has a much stronger depth of field than a larger lens. Not only can you make a feature of both foreground and background, you can keep everything in focus while you are at it. To achieve the same result with a larger lens, you may have to close the aperture, which means slowing the shutter speed, which means using a tripod...a lot of exta effort. After all that, the depth of field may still not be as strong as if you had used your wide-angle lens.

Wide-Angle Photography Tip #3. Perspective. Perspective is exaggerated by a wide-angle lens, so it makes long objects seem even longer. If you are shooting a fence-line, a jetty, railroad tracks, a road...anything that stretches away into the distance, the wide angle lens can really give your photo a boost. The result will be a truly three-dimensional sense of depth. The strong lines of the composition will lead the viewer into the picture, so they feel they are not just looking at the photo, but right into it.

Wide-Angle Photography Tip #4. Powerful foregrounds. The exaggerated perspective of the wide-angle lens makes objects at different distances seem much further apart than they really are. Foreground objects may seem a bit smaller, but objects in the background can seem many miles more distant. As a result, the wide-angle lens is excellent for adding impact to a foreground subject. You can stand very close to a person (or a tree, whatever) and they will appear to tower over the scene in the distance. This is the opposite of a telephoto lens, which tends to bring the background into prominence.

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