One of the first concepts I learned about in portrait photography was “Lens Compression.” The common definition is that a telephoto lens will “compress” the foreground and background together. This produces a more pleasing portrait that doesn’t distort facial features while still drawing attention to your subject (and not the background). In this post, I’ll get into more detail as to what lens compression truly is (and isn’t) and discuss how it applies to other genres of photography, like landscapes.