Beautiful Camera Lens Ring Creations by Photographer Ben High

lensring

Ben High of Marion, Iowa has two big passions: making jewelry and making photographs. When he’s not designing jewelry at Philip’s Diamond Shop, High loves tinkering with old cameras and shooting instant film photographs.

The two talents sometimes come together for some pretty fantastic results; a number of rings High has created are inspired by camera lenses.

We’ve seen rings based on lens focusing rings before (see here and here), but High has taken the concept one step further. See that ring above? The “focusing ring” actually turns.

High says that after creating his first camera lens ring, it didn’t take long for a customer to ask if he could “make it move like a real lens.”

His response? “Of course I can.”

The “focusing focus ring” is made of 14k white gold, and the markings can rotate from infinity to macro focus. “You can spin it one way for when you’re looking out to the future and the other for when you’re focusing on the task right in front of you,” High writes.

High is also quite good at creating non-focusing focus ring rings. He created this Polaroid-inspired wedding band for NYC-based photographer Patrick Tobin, who does marketing for The Impossible Project:

Patrick Tobin's Polaroid lens ring, created by Ben High. Photograph by Patrick Tobin
Patrick Tobin’s Polaroid lens ring, created by Ben High. Photograph by Patrick Tobin

Tobin writes that the ring was based on the focus scale around the lens of the Polaroid SX-70:

Polaroid SX-70. Photograph by Patrick Tobin
Polaroid SX-70. Photograph by Patrick Tobin

Here’s a third ring that was inspired by the distance scale focus ring found on the Canon 24mm tilt-shift lens. On one side of the ring is a distance scale, and on the other side are two shifting marks:

lensring3

lensring3b

Want to have high create a custom photography-inspired ring just for you? You can drop him an email to get the ball rolling. If you’re looking for a pre-designed ring, check out the Titanium Buzz lens ring that we featured earlier this month.

Discussion