How to Use a Ring Light #96

How to Use a Ring Light #96

Although ring lights have been around for a while, there seemed to be a huge proliferation of them during the Covid shutdown as more and more people were working remotely and more and more people on tv were broadcasting from home. As a result they were looking for ways of improving their lighting without a lot of expense or know how. Marketed as the quick, easy and inexpensive solution to all your lighting problems. But, and there’s always a but, it didn’t work out that way and it wasn’t so easy. C’mon there is a reason why it took multiple terms and hundreds of hours at photography school for us to learn how to light. Seriously, you really can’t believe that a quick $50 purchase would suddenly make you a professional at lighting do you? So what were the down sides? Well because most people don’t understand lighting they put the light right behind their laptop so the light hit their face straight on. Making the light really flat looking; although it was probably a bit of an improvement over their kitchen light it hit their face straight on. It’s really unflattering. But the bigger problem is that the ring light is a circular light with a black hole in the middle and it would reflect off people’s eyes and their glasses. So why was this a problem? Because it made them look like the devil with weird glowing eyeballs. And if they were wearing glasses that did not have antiglare? That circle would bounce around on their glasses as they moved their head even the slightest bit. Yea that was pretty fun to watch. So do you do if you need better lighting for your zoom meetings and your desk lamp isn’t cutting it and bought one of these? Well, if you have to go with a ring light then bring it a bit to either side of your head and a little bit above eye level. This will give it some direction and make you look a little more three dimensional without exaggerating any facial features with a long shadow. After all, most people don’t really want to exaggerate things like your nose right? It would also be helpful to have a large white reflector on the opposite side of your face. Just close enough to reflect some light back on your face to soften the shadows without removing them altogether and without creating a secondary shadow on the opposite side. What we want is to for you to look three dimensional and natural. And if you wear glasses? It would be really helpful for you to have anti-glare glasses so the lights don’t have any chance of reflecting back little round circles.