Change your view

Be sure to try out all your focal lengths for a fresh perspective

There’s much more to classic winter scenes than just wide sweeping vistas of mountains and fields. The season also provides plentiful opportunities for detail shots, as well as intimate landscapes.

One approach for breaking away from standard shots is to replace your wideangle lens with a telephoto for the day, challenging yourself to see subjects anew. Longer focal lengths offer the opportunity to hone in on elements such as frozen bubbles, leaves in frost, or low winter light hitting a single tree. They also compress the perspective of a scene, so that the viewer is more drawn to the subject.

When you switch up your lens choice, play around with the aperture, too. Using smaller f/stops than you might usually for standard landscapes can yield dreamy out-of-focus backgrounds and bokeh.