Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 G2 Lens

Hey everyone, I'm professional landscape and nature photographer, Ian Plant. And right now, I'm exploring the Desert Southwest. Looking for compelling landscape photographs. When I'm shooting landscape, my favorite type of lens to use is a wide-angle zoom. I'm a bit of a wide-angle junkie and I really love wide-angle lenses because they allow you to get a dramatic near-far perspective.

Right now, I'm shooting with Tamron second generation. 15 to 30 millimeter F2.8 lens. What I love about wide-angle lenses is that they allow you get really creative with perspective. And to change the relative scales of the object that are in your scene. So when you have a wide field of view, your background, all that beautiful scenery, looks much smaller.

And by getting close to a compelling foreground object, you can make it look much more prominent in the image frame and create this dynamic near-far perspective that helps draw the viewer deeper into the composition. And hold their interest over time. The trick to working with a wide-angle lens is to get close. Not only to your background, but also your foreground. So if you have really big scenery, when you go wide, it's gonna be reduced in size.

If you're relatively close to it, the scenery will still look prominent and big. But if you're farther away, by going wide, you might reduce the background scenery too small. So you wanna make sure you're in a right position. So that when you do go wide, the background scenery is still a prominent part of the overall composition. And this is doubly true for the foreground.

You've gotta get really close to those foreground objects. To make it big enough. To make it an important part of your overall visual design. When doing landscape work, you're typically stopping down to use smaller apertures like F11 or F16 to extend your depth of field and make sure everything's sharply in focus. But if you plan on doing any photography in low-light or at night, having a bright wide open aperture is often very helpful.

So F4, even better if you have F2.8 with a lens, will allow you to work in extreme low-light conditions. So there you have it. If I had to pick just one lens to take with me on a landscape photography trip. It would be a wide-angle zoom. And I encourage you to give the wider focal lens a try.

Just remember to get close to your subject. And to make sure that everything looks big enough and important enough in your final composition. I'm Ian Plant, and thanks for watching.