Ever wondered how those cool snaps of floating objects were made? We have the answer in this easy levitation photography tip — and it’s probably something you weren’t expecting.
Looking for more novel ways and concepts to make your photography interesting? We got you covered with a neat and easy photography tip. Today, it’s about how to achieve those cool photos of objects seemingly floating. Whether it’s for a unique product shot or a magical concept shoot, we’re sure you’ll find some use for this quick levitation photography trick!
In his “Levitation Photography” tutorial, Justin “Dunna” McDonough of Dunna Did It shares how he achieves these amazing shots, “no Hogwarts Diploma required.” Nope, it doesn’t require any strings, tossing objects up, or cutting the object out in Photoshop. No need to guess, because we’ll let Dunna himself show you how in the quick video below:
There you have it. All you need is your object, your camera (to shoot photos with, of course), a tripod, and a photo editing software like good ol’ Photoshop.
The trick is simply to take two shots of the same object and scene: one photo holding the object with your left hand, and the other holding it with your right hand. This way, you end up with a pair of symmetrical photos. Simply take the hands-free half of each photo and combine them in Photoshop.
There are two important parts to this trick. One is to make sure that you have your camera’s grid enabled to help you position your object in the exact same spot (more or less) in both of the shots. This will let you combine them a lot easier later. The second is to shoot in manual focus mode, so you have the focus exactly the same for both photos.
Then, you can move to Lightroom for some corrections for both photos before combining them on Photoshop. Next, Dunna shows how to work on these two photos in layers to line them up before proceeding to use the Layer Mask to brush out the parts you don’t want.
Easy peasy, yes? Now go ahead and practice this easy levitation photography tip!
Don’t forget to check out Dunna’s YouTube channel for more of his photography tricks and tutorials.
Screenshot image from the video by Justin “Dunna” McDonough