Nikon 50mm
Last week I had an opportunity to photograph Mike Vance. Mike is a cinematographer based out of Louisville. You can check out his work here. We did three different looks. My setup was pretty simple:
One Phottix Indra500 through a Photek 47in Softlighter v2 (camera right) with a reflector on the left.
Camera Gear:
All retouching and color grading for this shoot was done in Capture One. Here were my favorite photos from the session.
Today, I had the pleasure of photographing Neema. She is one of my wife's friends and a refugee from the Congo here in Louisville, Ky. In 2004, after the Second Congo War (also known as the Great African War), violence was still rampant throughout Africa. Neema and her family were directly affected by this and she lost both her parents that year. After walking back from collecting water with her sister, she witness both her parents get murdered. Neema's aunt moved their family from the war-infested Congo to Tanzania to survive. They traveled by truck and lived with her father's friends for three years until they moved to Kenya in 2009.
Life was not easy for Neema and her family in the refugee camp where they lived. It was hard to get food, water, or places to sleep. Neema grew up with Christian parents, however, there was severe discrimination against non-Muslims in the refugee camp.
In Kenya, Neema, applied to move to America. She had to go through classes to learn about America and go through interviews and medical tests. She was assigned to Louisville. Once she came to Louisville the most shocking thing about her move was that the trees were different colors in the fall and the weather was significantly colder here versus Africa.
My all time favorite lens is the 50mm lens. I learned almost everything I know about photography with the classic 50 focal length. I've love to sell and trade lenses to try different things but the 50mm lens has remained a constant in my bag. A 35mm lens has a look that is similar to what the eye sees, however it's not as interesting as the 50. The 50mm is pretty similar but compresses the background a little more and has less distortion.
When photographing portraits it's my go to. It has nice compression but doesn't completely compress the background so your subject still has some of the environment in it. This is all really personal preference but in my opinion the 50 is the best for portraits. If I had to sell all but one lens it would be a 50.
I couldn't imagine my camera kit without a 50mm prime. I photograph almost everything with either a 50mm or the equivalent. In my opinion it's the lens you can't afford not to have. When it comes to portraits its perfect. However, if you're primarily a headshot kind of person you may want to pick up a 70-200 or 85mm as it will have less distortion. The 50mm doesn't do the greatest for close up portraits. Below are some of my favorite images taken with the 50mm
