It was time to get to grips with the street photographer’s favourite focal length
YOUR PHOTO CHALLENGE: GO SHOOT… With a nifty fifty
Chris was certainly up for the next challenge, which involved taking pictures with his ‘nifty fifty’ 50mm lens. He opted to shoot in a market because it’s a location that he cut his photographic teeth on many years ago.
Markets are great locations to broaden your skills with a 50mm focal length, with the chance to shoot everything from character portraits to food still-lifes.
Our second day of shooting coincided with the Shambles Market in the town of Stroud. It turned out to be a rather compact collection of indoor and outdoor stalls, so we decided it would be more suitable and interesting to focus on details rather than the wider scene. Working handheld with a 50mm f/1.8 lens enabled us to remain fairly unobtrusive and capture sharp shots at relatively low ISOs, while the lens’s fixed angle of view added some consistency to the collection of shots.
a taste of autumn
Chris’s favourite shot from the market is a riot of autumnal colours, with the close-focusing ability of the 50mm f/1.8 enabling him to fill the frame