Like wide-angle lenses, telephoto lenses offer advantages that aren't so obvious, as well. Being 6 or more feet from your subject also makes it easier to take pictures of people. You can move around your camera when it's on a tripod and your subject without stumbling over them. We mentioned that wide-angle lenses expand distances. As you might suppose, telephoto lenses have the opposite effect-they compress distances.
Distant objects look closer to each other than they actually are.
You've probably seen extreme telephoto pictures of a large city or rows of buildings on a distant hillside. In such pictures, the distant subjects appear squashed together. This effect is caused by the very narrow angle of view, which eliminates from the picture all the nearby objects that help us judge distances. Because a telephoto lens has a narrow angle of view, it can help eliminate distracting elements in the composition of a picture. If there is a water tower next to a picturesque country church, you can crop the tower out of the picture by using a telephoto lens with its narrower angle of view.