How To Take Floating Photos // Levitation Photography Tutorial
okay okay you asked me enough times now I'll show you all my secrets what is up
people Dunna here and today we're gonna be talking about how I created these
photos where the objects are floating no Hogwarts Diploma required a few videos
ago I made a review for the new Sigma 56 millimeter and I needed a thumbnail
image so I got out my camera and the lens and I held that lens in front of the
camera and I thought what if I wasn't holding it what if it wasn't just
sitting there what if it was floating off of the desk then I realized that I
had just created a whole bunch of extra work for myself but it was too late I
had already had the cool idea and now I had to figure out how to do it now there
are a few ways that I've seen that people make objects float in photos one
of which is you can actually tie a string around it and hold it up and then
erase the string in Photoshop after but I didn't have any string and it kind of
seemed like a lot of work you can turn up your shutter speed and toss the
object like when you see all those photos on Instagram where people have an
object levitating over their hand I'm guilty of doing this as well it just
looks so cool but I didn't want my hand in the shot and I definitely wasn't
gonna toss this lens you can also take a photo of the background and take a photo
of the object and then cut the object out in Photoshop and levitate it but I'm
really bad at cutting things out in Photoshop it just wasn't gonna work
I needed something easier and I needed something that I could do with just what
I had laying around me and I think what I came up with is pretty cool and pretty
easy but instead of just telling you how I did it we're actually going to create
a photo where we levitate this vintage Pentax film camera and I'm gonna take
you through every step of the way to show you just how easy it is here's what
you're gonna need a camera to shoot the photo with yes you can just use your
phone if you want a tripod to hold the camera steady and some kind of photo
editing software I'm gonna be using Adobe Photoshop and a quick disclaimer I
am not good at Adobe Photoshop I have like three tricks I can do and that's
about it but those three tricks get me by so before you guys go too crazy
telling me how bad I am at Photoshop and how this could have been done way easier
let's use the comments section to add suggestions on how you might have done
this or how you might have made it easier so that everyone can benefit
from it let's keep it positive people all right let's get this photo
so as you can see I have my scene set up I've got the wooden desk and I've got
the white background I've got an overhead light that I really like I
think it looks really good for product shots like this but the actual setup and
the scene itself isn't super important what's gonna be important is the
execution of it so if you're just shooting with natural light or
whatever's in the room this can still work you don't need a fancy light or any
kind of fancy setup for this so I've got the camera that I'm gonna take the photo
on right here it's set up it's leveled it's got its nice framing and everything
it's basically looking how I want it I've dialed in all my settings I'm
currently at ISO 100 F 1.7 and at 1 250th of a second and there are two
reasons why I'm shooting at such a high shutter speed one is to balance the
light that I've got going on in the room right now and the other one is because
there's gonna be a little bit of shake when we get into the levitating part and
I want to try and freeze that motion okay so here's the big reveal for how I
got the shot it's actually made up of two separate photos the first photo is
of me holding the object on the right hand side and the second photo is of me
holding the object on the left-hand side then we combine these two photos get rid
of the hands and we're good to go now the key to this is that I have grids
turned on on my camera so I can see exactly where the camera is in the frame
and I want to try and keep it as close to the same as possible because the more
we have to move each shot the harder it's gonna be to put these together so
I've turned on my 3x3 grid and I'm just gonna try and line up the camera right
in the center in the same place for both shots another really important thing is
that you're going to want to be in manual focus mode and the reason for
this is because you want the focus to be exactly the same for both photos so I'm
gonna flip over to manual focus get the focus for my first shot that's what I'm
gonna try and hold it there switch over to the other hand and get the second
shot so while holding it I'm gonna try and make sure that I get focused in on
the Pentax logo I think I really like it tilted that way so I'm gonna check my
focus one more time
okay so I'm gonna try and remember a couple of things first of all the center
of the lens is right in the center of my frame the top right corner of the camera
I'm gonna kind of memorize that spot it's just on the top line and just
inside the first right line and then I'm gonna snap my first photo now while
moving the camera as little as possible I'm gonna grab it on the other side I'm
gonna hold it there get it back in that same spot and then snap the second photo
another thing that you can do is just make sure you get a couple of different
versions go back review what you have try and get the best couple that you can
the most accurate - so I'm gonna take a couple of backup shots really quick here
and then we're gonna hop over into Photoshop this one's a little tough
because this camera is actually pretty heavy so holding it out at the end of my
arm is a little tough but I think I got a couple of shots that are close enough
so let's hop into the computer and get these things edited up
okay so I've pulled the photos into Lightroom to start with so that I can
compare them pick the ones I want to go with and then make some minor
adjustments I've got these two photos which I think are going to be close
enough to make this work you can see that they're not perfect they're not
perfectly lined up yet but we're gonna do some things in Photoshop to help that
if you don't know how to pull a photo from Lightroom into Photoshop all you
have to do is highlight the photo and hit command E or ctrl E and it'll choose
to edit in Photoshop you can also right-click and there's an option that
says edit in Photoshop so what I want to do I'm going to go to the one with the
left hand and a double click on background and just hit enter so that it
creates a layer out of it an editable layer and then hit command a to make a
selection of the whole thing command C to copy I'm going to go over to the
other one double click and hit enter so that it creates an editable layer and
then I'm also just going to hit command V so that it pastes the other layers so
now I've got the two layers side-by-side and it take layer 1 and turn down the
opacity to about 36 37 % so that I can see how they line up and I'm going to
take the Move tool so that it gives me the ability to move and I'm gonna see
how well I can get these things lined up I think that's pretty good so now that
I've got the two lined up what we need to do is take our top layer and delete
the parts that we don't want the reason that I like this method is because it
actually keeps the shadow underneath it which is what kind of makes it feel like
a real levitation so what I'm actually going to do is create a layer mask and
brush out what I don't want so I'm going to select layer one and I'm going to go
down here and click on the layer mask icon it's gonna create a layer mask and
I'm going to hit V to get my brush tool I'm gonna crank up the size now
currently you can see the layer mask is all white which means that it's all
showing so we can either go over here and change this to black or we can hit X
and it'll switch those I want to make sure I go to my brush and I turn the
hardness down all the way cuz we want nice soft edges and then I can start to
paint in you can see it's creating black in the layer mask and it's deleting that
part of it now you can see because of the softness it's actually bringing in a
tiny little bit of the other picture here and I don't want that so I'm
actually gonna make my brush a little smaller hit X again and then get rid of
that X again continue getting rid of the parts so they don't want I'm gonna go
around the lens here make sure that none of the lines look super weird and if we
zoom out we pretty much have a picture so I'm gonna do the typical 4 by 5
Instagram crop and then I'm gonna add a curves layer so I can slightly mess with
the lighting a little bit and voila it's done we officially have a floating
vintage Pentax film camera so that's how easy it is as always I want to turn it
over to you guys do you have a different way that you like to do these levitating
floaty photos #floatos leave a comment and let me know let's start a
conversation if you have fun you learn something make sure to hit that like
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anything if you want to watch another video there's one right here I think
you'll really like it and I'll see you next time
How To Take Floating Photos // Levitation Photography Tutorial