"Ringlight Richie"

I read about a flash system called a ring-light, which appealed to me a lot, because it seemed to be capable of producing portraits that ordinarily you’d need studio lights for. You can imagine that in a zero space zone like HK, you can lose popularity for the kind of arrangement you see here on the left.  So, a ringlight – not a name that anything would have wanted, I’d think – which is intended for macro photos mainly, but can also be used for a certain style of portrait, and gives a very even sort of light when shooting close up (hence the macro thing). I had a look at a couple online, at a shop, phoned around to see if there were any cheap to buy Chinese made ones (I mean of course unbranded Chinese made ones – given that the bulk of stuff is made in China anyway) – but alas, nothing to be had. When I looked at a Nikon branded one, it consisted of two diffuser covered lights mounted on either side of the lens, facing inwards at 45 degrees – so if you shot something, you’d get diffuse light from close-up on either side (the Canon one is more like a ring of light around the end of the lens. All of them were very pricy, and I remembered that my friend Jens told me that he’d built one out of a big plastic bowl which he’d cut a hole in and lined with shiny stuff.  I remember this because he'd taken a particularly cool photo of Camilla with it.  I thought about the bowl option, and decided instead to go with the Nikon sort of idea – and give it a try by building one out of cardboard, lined on the inside with shiny tape; the idea being that it would fit over the end of my existing flash in a Y-shape.  The light would be reflected in two directions, and then out the sides of the end of y. This on the right is what the finished product looks like – and while I’m sure it’s effect is quite un-ring-lightish – it produces a very cool pool of close range, diffuse (i.e. shadows with soft rather than very hard, sharp edges) concentrated light with good separation between what you are aiming at close up and the background – in a way the sort of effect that you get only with a studio setup – but this one takes a sec to strap onto the end of the flash. For example, the second one below of Evan, shot in daytime, in our house, and really the background is just some interesting shape and mild colour - the only thing really going on is un-smiling Evan.  I’m pretty chuffed with it. It’s one of the things that is quite cool about photography – when it comes to light and managing it, improvisation and invention do fine (capturing it is of course much more expensive, and harder to do with a home-job). I’ve spent the rest of the weekend (other than tennis and the regular Sunday trip to the beach) blasting away with it. Everyone is pretty sick of the whole thing however (except Aiden who has real patience with me and my camera, and is always up for a bit of clowning around. Evan is simply on strike. He’s decided that if I’m going to stick a camera in his face, he’ll respond by looking really harassed and cross – which is funny – but it does make for an endless parade of grumpy portraits. So I have to make deals now – things like saying OK, I want to take a picture of you shouting very loudly (ooh, OK, I like a bit of shouting), or hey Ev, cool tattoo, can I take a picture of your tattoo? (Still looking grumpy though). Even the ultra tolerant Coxes have run out of patience – Courtney giving me the fists (cool pic though, produced in B&W below) - with the exception of Jordan, who like Aiden, is endlessly tolerant. So, below is the latest batch – I think they are pretty cool – hope you like them. PS – I’m bringing it to SA when I next come for work (in May) and I’ll be begging you.

Above, catching Ev on the lav (where he's not doing anything else really might lead to something not entirely grumpy.  To the left - he can really go for it with a bit of shouting - real jet engine blast.