1 Compress the colour
Use your telephoto lens to squeeze the maximum amount of colour into the frame
Colour is the essence of summer, and is therefore a key theme to your images at home or abroad. The trick is essentially a simple one: you use the longest telephoto setting that you have available in your kit bag to squeeze colourful objects into one image.
It’s a technique that works particularly well in a cottage garden – letting you see the layers of colour that the flowers provide in one frame, without having to show the lawns, paths and other distractions that a wide-angle lens would force you to include. Similarly, with a field of poppies this perspective ensures that the large gaps between blooms are not made apparent. When travelling, it proves a great technique for use in markets – compressing the exotic piles of fruit or pottery into a colourful composition.
Pick your spot
You need to ensure that you focus on the right point in your frame, however. With a telephoto, you will not get everything in focus, so don’t even try to maximise sharpness with a small i aperture. Let parts of the image blur out. But make sure that you pick the best-looking flower in the field as the one that’s in focus: this will be the one thing that is spotlit by this technique.