Levitation photography

Levitation photography

What is it?
Levitation photography is the appearance that the subject within the image is floating.


How is the effect achieved?
Levitation photography can be created two different ways. One of the ways to create this look can be done by the mixing together of strategic shooting and processing with Photoshop to get the amazing effect.


How is it done?
There are two ways of creating levitation photography, one way would be to take two images of which one contains the subject who you want you appear as floating with the other just being the scene. These can then be manipulated together through the use of layers in order to create this floating appearance. However, this can also simply be done by just taking the image as the subjects jumps- when they are in the point of freeze-frame to avoid the movement of the subject.


                                                      This image is done by capturing two separate images. One image will consist of the subject in the image sitting on a stool or chair, or leaning on something in order to get themselves off the floor. This will then be followed by the picture being taken with just the scene of the image, without the subject in the image. However, objects can be thrown into the image (like the one you can see to your left), these can appear within one of the images taken or in separate images allowing them to be layered separately. Once these images have been taken, the images will then be placed on Photoshop where they are separated into two layers, making them being able to be edited on their own. At this point, this is where you would also add the different layers on Photoshop (eg. the paper planes) in order to place them in the photograph.

Once they are all separated it will allow the editing of the opacity of each, and other technical appearance which will edit the images together in coherence to appear as if the subject is floating. One of these technical appearance could be seen as using the close stamp in order to erase detail that should not be in the photograph, e.g. parts of the stool etc. 

                        However, levitation photography is also simply done with just the movement of the subject e.g. jumping or leaping. This would be the easiest option when taking a levitation photograph however it may not always look as good as the Photo-shopped. As the photograph is just simply taken at the freeze of a jump, to capture the stillness and not the movement of the jump. This would mean for the camera to be set to with a high shutter speed in order to capture the freeze frame. This can look effective, as the image to the right does look effective however not as effective as the one above. I think when creating my photograph I will use the first technique in order to create a more powerful image.

Ideas to pursue for your own work
I think I defiantly want to use the first technique in order to create my own levitation photographs, as I feel they look more powerful and strong. However, I would also like the try and create images of people jumping at the point of freeze frame in order to explore my ideas. I feel this will give me a better sense in to levitation photography.

My own levitation photography 

Here I have created a levitation photograph of one of my classmates, of which I captured one image of my classmate laid on the table and then one of nothing there. I then merged these images together on photoshop. However, this process did no go as well as I had though as the table did not completely disappear. And so because of this, I just took the image of my classmate on the table and put it on top of the layer with no table or classmate. I then rubbed away the table with the eraser tool on Photoshop, which created the image you can see above. 

Here, is another levitation photograph I created with my tutor in class. This photograph was created to give the impression that my teacher was jumping or floating in order to press the button on the screen projector. Again I tried to merge the two images together, yet instead I just had to edit out the chair of which my tutor was standing on. 
  I then also made some changes to the image, like darkening the outside images through the window in order to create a most mysterious look to the image etc.