There’s a neat trick to create a Ringlight In a Pinch over on the Strobist site. Traditionally, ringlights are small flash units that attach to the front of your lens for macro photography. Larger units are made by a number of the lighting companies, like AlienBees, for fashion photographers. Ringlights produce a unique look, virtually shadowless light and circular reflections in the subjects eye.

The Strobist article has you using an umbrella directly behind the photographer. You’ll need to be fairly close to your subject in order to pull this off. It appears that this technique would work best for petite folks and not so well for big, burly boys.

The photographer who shot this way had a lighting diagram to show how to set this up. He used a free online tool over at SDG Photo Lighting Studio for producing a lighting diagram. It’s rather cool and would be great for anyone who needs to show details of their lighting setup. I can see photography instructors using this for their students.

You can go see what I created in less than a minute on the site.

You can add models in various positions, lights, backgrounds, reflectors and rotate and position them as needed. It’s even got labels for a Key, Fill and Hair light. You gotta try it.