It was 1990 something and I had just been told by my high school art teacher that I’d never be a professional oil painter, Disney animator, police sketch artist or anything else involving art. Apparently I didn’t “have an artistic bone in my body”. Or MAYBE I just had an utter disdain for creating realistic drawings of Appaloosa horses and whatever else my Andrew-Wyeth-wanna-be, dull-color-palette-loving, hack of an art teacher would have us imitate.

So I ditched my paint brushes and dreams of being a soft spoken, Afro sporting, TV host/ painting instructor (RIP Bob) and started looking for another creative outlet.

What’s the only other state funded art program at a small Texas school in the mid nineties? You guessed it. High School Yearbook class! So I signed up and was immediately issued a Pentax K-1000 and a super sexy 50mm lens. Armed with no more instruction than “Keep your light meter in the middle” and “never set the shutter speed below 1/60” I set off to create the most uninspired images North Texas has ever seen. These images were as flat and boring as the Midwestern landscape and honestly I was ashamed of having taken them. But apparently we are our own worst critics because my yearbook teacher flipped out at how amazing these images were and I was ordered to” keep doing whatever it was I was doing”.

Now if you were into photography in the 90’s and a teenage boy, you knew who Herb Ritts was. If you weren’t into photography and a teenage boy you knew Herb Ritts’ photos. He was the guy taking the super sexy images of Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Christie Turlington and other unfortunate looking women of the time. But it wasn’t the statuesque, scantily-clad beauties that had my attention. It was the lenses and what Herb was doing with those lenses that had me mesmerized. Herb was using longer lenses and zooming in to blur / clean up the backgrounds to make his subjects stand out. I wanted to do that. That was the look I was chasing! I wanted to be Herb! Still do, but I digress…

if you were into photography in the 90’s and a teenage boy, you knew who Herb Ritts was

So I marched into the yearbook editors office, showed her some photos taken by Herb Ritts and…was immediately suspended for bringing “inappropriate materials to school”. After my “sabbatical”? Yeah, let’s go with that. After my sabbatical, my yearbook teacher’s orders still stood. Stay with the 50mm and don’t change a thing. Just keep cranking out those creatively neutered yearbook masterpieces.

So there it is. If I were a comic book super villain bent on ridding the world of 50mm lenses, that would be my origin story. I’m not sure what name I’d go by. I’d love some suggestions on that one. But yeah, until recently I hated 50mm lenses like White House staffers hate Twitter.

So when a photographer friend and trusted photography educator told me that I should try using a 50mm lens in my smash cake work, I shot lasers out of my eyes and melted him on the spot. Up to that point the only experience I had with a 50mm since yearbook class * shudder * was the Canon Nifty 50 and it was about as useful as fake vomit. It couldn’t focus for all the tea in China, which coincidentally is where they make fake vomit. But a true friend is not afraid to give you the hard truth, so I did the mature thing and admitted there was a very minuscule chance that I may be wrong about 50mm lenses.

The next day I took my friend’s advice and I rented the Sigma Art 50mm 1.4 from lensrental.com and prepared a smash cake set for what was bound to be the worst smash cake session of my career.

Now if you guys wanted to quit reading at this point I wouldn’t mind because this is the part where I have to admit I was wrong. During that shoot I discovered that the Sigmas Art 1.4 is an amazing lens. You’ll need to wear gloves when using it because the focus is so damn sharp. Even at 2.8 which was an impossible aperture for most of my 50mm lenses, it focused beautifully. I’m even making a habit of shooting at 1.4 every session and it nails focus at that aperture as well. Plus there is the added bonus of no distortion with the 50mm focal length. This means no more misshapen baby heads caused by wide angle lenses. Oh, and I almost forgot, I can use a much slower shutter speed and not worry about blurry images caused by camera shake! This is a very real concern when shooting natural light sessions in the Pacific Northwest after my standard 5 cups of coffee! Holy crap I love this lens!

Like my high school art teacher and the principal that suspended me for bringing Herb Ritts photos to school, I was wrong. But unlike those buttoned up, closed minded, soul crushing wastes of human potential, I can admit it. (Obviously, I still have some high school related issues, but, don’t we all?)

Sigma, I’m going to give you the same marching orders my yearbook teacher gave me: “Keep doing what you’re doing and don’t change a thing! Your Sigma Art 50mm 1.4 is a true masterpiece and whoever designed it for you needs a huge raise!”

As for the rest of you, I want to thank you for reading. I hope you get out there and give the Sigma Art 50mm 1.4 a try. To rent one of these bad boys and try it for yourself go visit my friends at lensrental.com. They’ll send that box full of awesomeness straight to your front door and you’ll be one step closer to tack sharp, beautifully bokehed up, birthday bliss in no time.

Catch you in the next one,

Daniel

P.S. What WOULD my super villain name be???

The Sigma Art 50mm 1.4: So Sharp It Hurts!

if you were into photography in the 90’s and a teenage boy, you knew who Herb Ritts was