When it comes to portrait photography, a 35mm prime lens is the perfect focal length to achieve multiple different looks for your clients. This is a great focal length for so many types of photographers, from wedding pros to photojournalists, from beauty portraits to street photography. There’s just something about a 35mm prime lens that gives your images such a unique look and feel.
35mm allows me to get tight, middle, and wide with my subject for portraits– and all three give me completely different looks.
The 35mm has a very subtle slimming effect with portraits. Because of the nature of the wider angle of the lens, any part of the subject that is placed near the edges of the lens will be elongated by the slight distortion, thus creating that very subtle slimming effect. This is a perfect lens for photographing portraits, specifically of women.
For my photo shoot with Violet, I wanted to be able to run with a single lens the entire shoot. I knew I wanted to be able to showcase the environment as well as create some nice close-up beauty portraits for her as well. This shoot was originally supposed to be a golden hour portrait shoot, but when the clouds decided to hover throughout the entire sunset, I had to be able to pivot. This is why a prime lens with a fast aperture like the Tamron SP 35mm F1.4 is so crucial. When I ended up not having the bright sunlight I was expecting, I needed the ability to pivot, and fast glass is the only reason these natural light portraits worked without having to push my Canon 5D Mark IV to a high ISO that would have resulted in noisy final images.
