EVENING GLOWGrand Teton National Park, Wyoming The Teton Range, especially when viewed from Grand Teton National Park, is breathtaking. Seeing those mountains for the first time is a jaw-dropping experience.

Because there are no foothills to the east, these giant, jagged peaks rise straight up from the valley floor to tower imposingly over Jackson Hole. Depending on where you're standing, they might be only a few miles away. Head out onto Jackson Lake or Jenny Lake, and they're directly in front of you. They will most certainly command your attention.

How is it, then, that people are so often disappointed by the photographs they make of the Tetons (or mountains in general)? Why don't they look as dramatic out of the camera as they did in person?

Here's how to get from "illusions" of grandeur to the real thing:

1. Lens Choice 

A longer focal length will compress the scene, rendering the mountains larger: much closer to what you perceive when looking at them with your eyes. Standing in the same spot, look at a mountain scene with a wide-angle, a mid-range, and a long lens to appreciate the difference. 

I made the photograph below from the same general location as the one at the top of the post. Mount Moran looks quite a bit larger when captured with the long lens.

AWAKENINGBright autumn foliage punctuates the Willow Flats landscape at daybreak while the twilight wedge tints the sky pink. With temperatures below freezing, steam rises above distant Jackson Lake as Mount Moran waits for the sun to rise and warm its face.

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming 2. Edit the composition

Though your impulse may be to include as many peaks as possible in the frame, expansive vistas will diminish the size of the mountains. This isn't to say that you shouldn't make "big landscapes" when photographing mountains. Just realize that the wider you go, the smaller the mountains will appear.

If you wish to maintain some sense of immensity while incorporating more of the range, consider making a stitched panorama:

PEAK PERFECTIONPeak foliage beneath the Teton peaks: perfection.

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming 3. Scale

Incorporate elements that will show relative size, like a person or an animal. Below, the moose and foreground trees provide scale, while a long lens compresses the scene which makes Grand Teton appear to be even closer. 

AUTUMN PASTORALLate in the day, a family of moose feeds near the Snake River. The father is nearby, just outside of the frame.

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming 4. Panoramas Needn't Stay That Way

Panoramas can help solve the "puny mountain" problem, but maybe a panorama isn't what you envisioned. Not to worry. Shooting a panorama does not mean the finished image must be super-wide. It's simply a tool that will produce the final product you're after. 

Say what?

Let's say you've got a composition in mind (landscape orientation) which includes both a foreground element and mountains. You want the mountains to render more accurately to the way they look to your eyes. While a mid-range focal length enables the entire scene to be captured, it'll shrink the mountains.

Swap the wider lens for a longer focal length. This will be too tight; you won't be able to include both the foreground element and the mountains. That's okay, though, because you're going to flip the camera and shoot vertically. Now both the foreground and mountains fit within the frame, and the mountains appear to be much closer, but this time you're missing parts of the scene on both the left and right sides. Shooting a panorama solves this problem. 

As long as you think ahead when composing the panorama (i.e. leaving additional space on all four sides), you can crop the image in post-processing to a standard 4:6 or even a 1:1 format.

The photograph below was a stitched pano comprised of three images shot vertically, then cropped. It was never intended to be a panorama. I needed to capture it in this way to maintain the size of both Mount Moran and the fence. 

KEEPSAKEMount Moran in late spring, still decorated with winter's gift of snowfall.

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming Help your camera capture the grandeur you're seeing with your eyes. 

Mountains speak and wise men listen.
~John Muir