While visiting Fort Ontario in Oswego NY for an engagement session for my wedding photography business, we were lucky enough to have a brilliant Sunset. The position I was at near the Northern edge of Fort Ontario did not have anything of interest on the land for the foreground of the photo, and the Sun was setting quick. Instead, I used my 70-200mm lens on my camera, and quickly snapped this extremely colorful Sunset.

Using the longer focal length allowed the Oswego Harbor West Pierhead Lighthouse far into the water of Lake Ontario to show up bigger in the scene. With my usual choice of wide-angle lens for landscape photography, the Lighthouse being so far away would have just appeared as a small dot in the photograph. The longer focal length also allowed me to better compose the scene to include the small boats in the foreground; although my lens of choice for landscape photography is usually an ultra-wide angle, this shows that you can take great landscape photos with a telephoto lens when the opportunity presents itself.

“Oswego Harbor West Pierhead Lighthouse and Boats”