To be honest, it sounds more exciting than it is, lol. We're not talking real fire here but the effect of using a piece of copper pipe to create a circle of firey light in front of the lens. I've seen some gorgeous examples by other photographers but struggled to find the simple 1" piece of copper pipe myself (in the US you can get it cheaply on Amazon but not in the UK).
In the end I found a helpful guy in Screwfix who couldn't cut me a tiny bit of the long pipes I spotted but did find me a pack of connectors when I explained what I needed it for (he tried doing it in front of his iPhone bless him)! I had to buy a bag of 10 but turns out it was only £6.99 so perfect! I have plenty left after sending a couple to fellow photographer friends so let me know if you'd like one!
Anyway, turns out it's trickier than I thought to get the ring effect, I kept finding the light was too strong or in the wrong place. It needs to hit at exactly the right angle to get the full effect - I did eventually manage as you can see above - but I also like some other effects you can get when the light reflects in different ways on the copper. Have fun, play around, keep twisting and rocking it, while taking care not to scratch your lens! Here are some more of my more successful attempts below and a few fails at the bottom. I need a lot more practice, you can see Priya was getting a bit fed up with me!
As this project was originally supposed to be about pushing ourselves to take self portraits, here are a couple I took this week too...
With the help of some sellotape...
And some (unedited) fails as promised...
Next up in the loop is the lovely and super talented Ann Owen... https://annowenfoto.com/blog/posts/the-april-portrait-loop-the-copper-pipe/
Wow these are incredible! All of them and especially the first one, what a perfect ring of fire! And you are amazing I can't believe you attached it to your camera and managed such a beautiful self portrait too! These are all so great and thank you again so much for sending me mine❤❤