Ringflash effect. The shadow halo. How is this effect achieved? Everything is about the equipment. Let us have a look at ABR800—an affordable ringflash from AlienBees…

As we can see, the ringflashes have a central mount, which allows the camera lens to be positioned in the center of a circular flash. Thus, upon being triggered, the flash emits light, that comes from all the points around the camera lens.

This creates a wrap-around light with virtually shadow-free main object. Because the light is not thrown off-axis from the lens, there is no preferred direction for the shadow to fall to. When faced in front of the wall, for example, the object throws a smooth shadow all around its objects—and this creates an even shadow halo on the wall.

Now let us move to the topic's main picture and the setup used to capture it.