Researching about levitation photography I found out two ways of doing it. The first one just involved models jumping. The second one, which allows the photographer to create more surreal pictures, involved Adobe Photoshop. As I wanted to try to work with this editing software I used the second way of doing the pictures. I decided to use my bedroom as background. The idea for the picture was representing a dream as could appear in the mind of the person asleep. I tried to mix reality with imagination to give the impression of a person floating in his room. I tried a couple of poses sitting on a stool, then I took a picture at the room without the stool and the model. It’s very important that the camera doesn’t move between the pictures, for this reason I used a tripod. As this picture is a self-photograph I also used an infrared remote to control the camera while I was posing.
The second part of the work was made on the computer. I chose the photograph with the best pose and I imported it in photoshop as a layer. As second layer I used the picture of the background. Then using a mask I erased part of the first layer revealing the second one. Doing this I removed the stool from the picture creating the floating effect that I was looking for.
I also imported the final image in Adobe Lightroom to edit colors, exposure and to add some grain for making the image look analog. I think that the final product looks pretty good for being the first attempt using this technique.
In the next shooting I could try different poses and I could also try to involve objects floating around to increase the magical and surreal effect. I would also like to try some outdoor shots, the only problem is that a tripod and a stool are always needed and sometimes is difficult to carry all the equipment around.
