Gabriel M. Ortega Photography + Multimedia

The (almost) 50mm Challenge

This past Friday was Virgen del Carmen Day, the most important religious holiday for the patron mother of Chile. The most remarkable show of religious fervor takes place in the north of Chile, in a tiny town that balloons from 800 to several thousand during the Festival of La Tirana.

Alas, I didn’t head out to La Tirana this year, instead I decided to cover the events at the National Sanctuary in Maipu, a borough of Santiago. But I wanted to challenge myself so it wouldn’t be as easy as grabbing the Canon 5D with her inseparable lens, the venerable 24-70mm f/2.8 L.

The challenge was set: Photograph the two days of festivities using only one lens and one body.

Nah, I wanted to go back to my photo roots, where I began with an old black brick of a Minolta x700 film camera and the standard 50mm lens that it came with. So much excellent work has been done with a 50mm field of view that I wouldn’t be able to secretly complain in my head that I didn’t have the right gear. In fact, David duChemin‘s motto came to mind: “Gear is good, vision is better.”

Problem is: I don’t have a 50mm prime lens at the moment. So I grabbed my 28mm f/1.8 and stuck it on my trusty ol’ Canon 40D, giving me an effective field of view of 44.8mm, close enough to 50.

The challenge was set: Photograph the two days of festivities using only one lens and one body. A call to basics set out to provoke my eye as well as any habits — good or bad — that may have developed from years of reliance on zooms. This is a brief selection from the two days of documentation.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at %I:%M %p. It is filed under Blog and tagged with festivo, holiday, Maipu, Santiago, Virgin del Carmen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.