Getting Creative with ring lights : Always go for more

Strobist's post about ring flashes , is pretty interesting , he makes a good point about integrating the ring flash in a more complex light setup , and not just settling for the "ring flash effect" .... He gives us a nice comparison between 2 self made ring flashes , and how each photographer uses it differently ..... Check it out .... ! Heres a teaser ....

Canadian amateur photog Tanya Shields, (left) built her ring light adapter out of common household items. It's a neat approach, as attested to by the fact that I immediately went out and ripped the design off.

Tanya did exactly what very many of us would have done: Walk around here house shooting anything or anybody who would sit still long enough. Her self portrait up top was done with her ring flash, too.When I made my first ring flash, I did just about the same thing. The light just puts a whole new spin on just about everything. And you are like a kid in a candy store -- a weirdly 3-D, flattish, wrapped-shadow candy store. You go out and shoot a memory card full of photos that each like all of the other ring flash pix out there.

Nothing wrong with that. You just can't help yourself. It's too fun.

Long-time pro David X. Tejada, (right) whose lighting videos have spent so much time on Strobist that they keep a toothbrush here, made a spiffy new hardware store ring flash. (He shows you how to build it here.)

But someone like David, who has been around the block a few times, tends to think of the ring flash a component in a multi-light scheme. This is an approach that many of us can learn from.




Take the example above. David shot his nephew (and fellow Strobist reader) Ian, using a similar ring flash to Tanya's model.

But David is using the flash as part of a triangle lighting setup, with two other speedlights positioned about 20 degrees behind Ian on each side. In doing so, he is completely wrapping Ian with light. Working about two stops above the ambient exposure (as David is) means that Ian is effectively being lit on another plane than the diffuse, grayish ambient.

___________

POP QUIZ:

Q: How would I know David is working about two stops over the ambient?
A: Because on a cloudy day, properly exposed snow would be rendered a couple of stops over medium gray - bordering on white. But David's snow is very close to medium gray. Bringing his subject up with strobe allows him to put the snow at any tone that he wants, from near-white to pitch black.
___________

Okay, back to the photo: Which means that not only can David get this cool separated (dare I say, almost Dave Hill-ish) look, but he could also do the warm gel / cool gel thing, or make that dropped-down ambient any color he wanted.

Here's the point: The first thing someone like David T. does with a new light source is to get past the obvious and start to experiment with it as an integral part of a lighting scheme rather then as an end to itself.

Enjoy the rest of the article over at

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/01/playing-with-new-light-two-approaches.html