Photo Friday: Robert Stackhouse

Hey everyone! This post is a little different than the average Photo Friday -- this one is more a DIY than just a list of photos, but when Robert proposed this idea, I thought it was too cool to pass up. Enjoy! 

I guess it was serendipity that one day in two thousand and nine I happened to see an article on lifehacker talking about a fellow who had improvised a ring flash from fiber optics and his DSLR's on board flash (http://lifehacker.com/5148948/diy-fiber-optic-ring-flash). It was serendipitous, because my wife and I had recently discovered that we would be having a child, we had seen an instructable on how to create a star-field ceiling (http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-create-a-fiber-optic-starfield-ceiling/), we were planning on following said instructable, and we knew we were going to have leftover fibers.

Making the flash was a bit cumbersome since the original article seems to gone offline, but as they say, persistence pays off.

One use of a ring flash is to cast a soft shadow around the outline of your subject if it is shot in close proximity to a backdrop.

I'll let the images speak for themselves.
On board flash:

Hacked ring flash:

Though I haven't done it myself, if you plan to improvise a ring flash of your own and have an external flash, I might go the two bowls and an external flash route. Perhaps that's a future exercise for me.
There are other uses for a ring flash. I personally want to see how it does for outdoor night portraiture. Happy shooting.

 Robert graduated with a B.E.D. – Visual Studies and has been involved with the design and implementation of various types of web applications since October of 2004.  A husband and father of one, Robert is a staunch advocate for localism and supporter of local businesses.  He is involved in local tech groups that freely exchange knowledge of best practices when he can be. He can be found blogging, on twitter at @rstackhouse, and on facebook.  

[Interested in guest blogging on Simply, Valorie?]