"Dan Ritchie, 26, seen at his home in Denver on May 20, 2008."
This afternoon Mike and I continued out DIY photo gear binge with his roommate Dan. Mike has been trying to get me to help him make a ring flash for the past week and today we finally worked on it. Yesterday Mike and Dan started on the prototype that was a great start. Dan is a mechanic and his garage is full of power tools so he was the perfect guy for the job. The initial model wasn't doing exactly what we wanted so after much debate and trial and error we decided to head to my favorite orange camera supply store to pick up some materials. While we were there we searched for some alternative ideas. We found a circular florescent bulb in the clearance section and I decided to take it up to the front and buy it if the price was right. My guess was that it would be around $5 which would make it a great deal. To our surprise, when we scanned the item at the self checkout it rang up $0.01 (no that's not a typo). I couldn't believe it. I pulled a dollar out of my wallet so fast you would thought I was trying to steal something. I even managed to purchase some candy with the $.99 that I had left over. When my sister and me go shopping we're always looking for a "mistake" and this was one of the best mistakes that I've found. Dan tried to buy the rest of the ones that they had left but it didn't ring up in the system at all.
When we got back to Mike's place I was eager to try out my $0.01 purchase. The essential concept of a ring flash/light is to place the light source on the same axis of the lens so that there are not any shadows on the subject. I tried to mix it up a bit by taking the light source away from the lens. Then by having dan look into the light I was able to capture some nice circular catch lights in his eyes. My light doesn't have the power that Mike's flash version has but for studio portraits I should be able to make mine work.
Tomorrow is another day closer to graduation so I'm sure it will be a good one!
-JCE
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