For Juan, lenses play an essential role in doing amazing portraits. Some of his go-to lenses include the 80-200mm f/2.8D ED-IF, a ‘90s lens that’s built-like a tank; a vintage 50mm f/1.4 lens, a well-loved classic staple in shooting portraits which renders background blur beautifully. Another hard to beat lens is the NIKKOR 17-35mm f/2.8D, a very sharp and high-color fidelity wide-angle zoom, giving him the flexibility to include backgrounds in his framing, especially important when shooting fashion photography.

RAW is the best format you can shoot with when doing photography, especially portraiture. RAW files contain all the information captured in a particular scene, and not utilizing the full potential of a sensor is a huge waste of a camera’s image capture capability. Shooting JPEGS is good, but being a compressed image format, optimized for size and not image quality, they offer limited tonal range, notably when printing images.

Wide aperture lenses have huge advantages, because it enables one to blur the background and maintain the constant focus of the viewer of your photo to your subject. Shallow DOF also opens up a whole new world of creative possibilities, according to Juan. Rendering the background as a soft blur for portraits makes one’s subjects stand out, thus capturing the viewer’s attention.

Of course, camera settings are relative to every shooting situation. However, as a starting point, this is how Juan sets his camera as he readies for a portrait shoot:

• File format- 14-bit uncompressed RAW
• Drive mode - Continuous High
• Exposure mode – Manual
• AF-mode - Single-point AF (when available), Otherwise I shoot in MF with 3D focus tracking activated
• Picture Control – Standard
• White balance - 5600K

I only have one "must-have" accessory when I'm shooting and it's my tripod, says Juan.
A good-quality tripod mated to a sturdy ballhead is essential to my shooting arsenal. I chose the sturdiest tripod I can afford which is the Manfrotto 055CXPRO4 Carbon Fiber tripod legs which I paired with the Kirk's Enterprise Solutions KES BH-1 Ballhead. The tripod legs are compact enough when collapsed to be easily transported while at the same time being strong enough to be able to support the camera's weight.