For most of my early photography - perhaps the first ten years - I seldom used any telephotos. I was a wide angle (24mm equiv) nut with occasional 50mm shots. I think this is very normal, and I would urge everyone to start with a few focal lengths than buy loads of lenses.
My camera bag these days has around five lenses plus an assortment of teleconverters. I now shoot in all different focal lengths but it took me a while to get there.
I've learned so much by going to the lesser 'obvious' landscapes. In landscapes that may appear to hold very little appeal due to there being too many distractions, there may be something wonderful to shoot if you can isolate it with a telephoto.
Hokkaido for instance has so much infrastructure and machinery everywhere, it takes effort to find those good compositions without some unwanted object creeping into the frame.
While I was in Romania, I had the same issues. It is a complex landscape, but I actually take a lot of delight in finding those more simpler shots amongst the noise.
I think it’s all about practice, and exercising your ‘visual awareness’. If you can pin-point an isolated group of objects out of the noise, the way that someone can maybe pull out a separate conversation from a crowd, then this is good ‘visualisation’. I’d urge doing this all the time, even when you’re not taking photos. It’s all good practice.
