Senior Portraits with my new Rokinon lens

Last week, I was able to get my hands on a Rokinon 35mm T1.5 lens from a friend of mine, and the lens is practically brand new, I just had to do some cleaning on it. I had used one of these lenses a couple of times before while on film sets, but I was more than excited to get one for myself, so I figured the perfect time to test it was during the Senior Portrait session I had. Before I went out though, I did a couple of test shots with my dog, just to make sure everything was working fine. The lens looked great, so I was super excited to go out and test it!

One of the test shots of my dog.

The portrait session was for two friends of mine who were graduating from CSUN, so we ended up doing the shoot on campus. We wanted to shoot at some of the gardens in LA, but they all closed a while before sunset, and the campus of CSUN was our backup plan. The photos however, still turned out fantastically! 

Once we got onto campus, we ended up shooting mainly in front of the Preforming Arts Center, which was a stunning building with an amazing water piece surrounding half of it. We also shot in some of the trees surrounding the building, and on the steps to the library.

I didn't want to shoot plain portraits that I had seen online, so I worked with the seniors to create fun poses and make them feel comfortable by using cheesy jokes (such as: why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field). This helped to relax them out a lot, and made for an awesome shoot!

Overall, I think the shoot was very successful! I could have gotten similar shots with another lens, but I think the quality of these photographs can easily surpass the cheaper lenses. Granted the cheaper lenses, like the Canon 50mm, still produce great images, but this lens definitely shines above that lens (which I also own). The build quality of the lens is also suburb, creating a lens that feels much more rugged and built to last than a cheap plastic lens. Overall, so far I love the lens! We'll see how it lasts in the long term!