• Thomas Jefferson.

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While I have always had a fascination with telephoto lenses, I have always been reluctant to try them out for landscape photography. But while visiting White Sands National Park, I found an excellent excuse to use them as my primary landscape tool. Unfortunately, we only spent two days at this beautiful park, and I was hoping that one of those days, we would get to enjoy the brilliant skies that made the state of New Mexico famous among nature photographers. Well, it was not to be. On both days, we had overcast skies, and any color that appeared during sunset was very subdued.

Now, generally, on a location like that, I would naturally reach for my 24-70, but at White Sands, I realized that the wide-angle focal lengths would obscure the little patches of colors in the sky. The only way I could isolate the colors in the sky was by shooting my wide-angle in portrait orientation, and even then, the foreground patterns in the sand often dominated. So, in my frustration, I decided to try my 70-200, and it was the best decision of the trip. I could quickly isolate the small patches of color in the sky with the telephoto. Moreover, they allowed me to compress what looked like miles of white gypsum dunes doing their best imitation of ocean waves. I had a lot of fun shooting these telephoto landscapes all around the park, and today's image is one of the best from the lot.