Well….. in photography!
I don’t really know how to do that in real life. Ask David Blaine maybe? But in photography, I could definitely share you some secrets . And this is surprisingly easy.
First Technique: Photoshop
What you will need: Camera, Tripod, a flexible model and stool or blocks for support.
1.Capture a photo of the background without the subject.
2. And then capture the photo with the subject. Take in mind that the camera was not moved and the lighting are the same with the background alone. For better stability, I strong advice to use tripod. This would make the editing easier and realistic.
3. Now, it’s time to open Photoshop to merge the two photos together and delete the objects that supports the subject by “Masking” tool. In that case, follow my recommended YouTube tutorial below. I assure you, this masking tool in Photoshop is MAGIC!
Levitation Photography by Photon Collective
FINAL OUTPUT:
These are the other output.
As you have noticed, the color grading of the photos have also changed in the final output. It’s because I also polished it via Lightroom desktop app. I used Rufosque preset created by Anthony Rufo. I got this preset from Lightroom Classrom PH community in Facebook. If you’re interested with Lightroom presets, I talked about it more here.
2. Second Technique: Jump Shots
If you are not interested with Photoshop, you can still achieve levitation photos by simply jumping and setting the camera in LOW SHUTTER SPEED.
The following photos are captured by my friend angelisantina and was taken way back 2013! This is me 5 years ago. I’m not much into photography back then but I’m into modeling …well to my photographer friends.
This is largely inspired by yowayowacamera.com, a Japanese photographer whose daily levitation photos became a worldwide hit! These are just some photos from her series that I really liked.
Now the question is, how would you make an ordinary jump shot into levitation photo? As a model for levitation photos myself, the key is always the facial expression. As much as possible, make your face look relax. It also helps that you look upwards as if you are heading to that direction even if you are about to fall down. Leg muscle should look relaxed too. In that matter, it would be easier to wear long dresses and leggings to hide the tension in the leg muscles for higher jumps. No doubt why in most yowayowa’s photos, she is wearing long dresses.
Although here, I bravely wore jumper shorts haha! These photos were taken at Quiapo church, a popular landmark church in the Philippines.
There are disadvantages of this technique though:
- This is tiring as you need to repeatedly jump to be able to have good shots.
- You will look like a fool for passerbys.
- Prone to accident
- Not ok at night time since low shutter speed will make your photos really dark.
We also had a shoot in UP Diliman!
Shot location at Little Tokyo
Special thanks to the following!
- To my mentor G2Photography for teaching me how to edit in Photoshop and all things I know about Photography.
- To my friend angelisantina.wordpress.com for taking those great photos of me from the past.
How about you? Would you be interested in Levitation Photography? Are you going for photoshop or jumpshot? Let me know!
Remember, Sharing is Twice the Learning,
Gurezu 😉
——Let’s connect!——-
GUREZU 