Selective Focus, Fast Lenses & High Speed Sync

I made a decision a long time ago to only buy fast, pro lenses.  Here are a couple of portrait examples of why fast lenses allow you to be more creative.  The drawback is that these lenses are bigger and heavier, and can cost 5 to 10 time as much.  Ouch!

Both of these photos were shot in bright daylight at an f-stop of 2.8 @ 70mm.  Slower consumer lenses at f/4.0 or higher would render both subject "in focus."  In order to get great looking skin tones with no shadows in bright daylight, you need to add some type of fill light.  Be it a reflector or flash.  Notice the nice catchlight in her eyes.  There was a flash positioned off camera right with a warming filter attached to give a warm skin tone.  The flash was on high speed sync using a shutter speed of 1/640 of a second.  Without high speed sync on your flash, you could not get this shot.