I realized that in behind the scenes videos, photographers outdoors seem very far away from their subject with a huge lens rather than being close up.
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Additionnally, long focal lenses tend to have shallow depth of field, i.e. distance where things are in focus. So you’d focus on model’s eyes, which is the most important, and blur more or less all the rest, including wrinkles, scars etc.
Also sometimes people can feel a little bit uncomfortable if a photographer is right up in their face just a few inches away from them taking a picture. Using a longer lens allows a little bit of physical distance between the photographer and the subject which can help make them feel a little more relaxed.
It’s about perspective, which refers to the spacial relation of the photographer to its subject. Different distances make the subject look a little different, and many feel that a little more distance looks better / more natural. There are tons of photos taken from near distance too.
Another reason is, that its easier to get an out of focus/soft background when using a longer lens. That helps to isolate the subject, which is often a feature in portraits.
Standing further away allows the use of lenses which create better proportioned photos to be taken.
Too close and the lenses required have unwanted distortion.
Do look at the same image photographed with different focal length lenses.
Because those lenses and distances don’t distort features in the image.
Short focal length lenses at close distances tend to stretch things out. You never want to make a model’s nose look bigger than it is in real life. lol.
With longer focal length lenses photographers can still take relatively close up images and keep the natural proportions without distortion.
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