Sure, you can also make something float in Photoshop, but what fun is that?

The Challenge

Capture levitation along with your camera-somebody or thing (or both! or lots of both!) actually floating in a precise space. Photoshop isn’t entirely banned, but there are serious rules to how you employ it. More on that below.

The Method

Our lead photo is from Melvin Sokolsky, who created incredible illusions by suspending models with thin aircraft wires. But the rationale that they still look so amazing today is that 99.9% of what you notice is real. He just polished out the string.

A flickr board on the topic has many examples, complete with behind-the-scenes photos and links to tutorials, on ways to create levitation.

1. You should use a wire, fishing line or something similar and smudge it out of the photo.
2. You could have your subject leap and take a photo at the time of zero gravity. (just be careful!)
3. That you would be able to combine ideas 1 & 2.
4. One could plant a camera on a tripod, toss objects into a single scene one after the other, and then combine the pieces of these scenes in photoshop so everything is floating in one frame.

My only real Photoshop restriction this is that you simply not pull in objects from various locations and use digital tools to pull and drop them into a new frame. Everything should be captured in situ.

The camera needs to be the tool tricking us. Post production should only exacerbate the camera’s effect.

The Rules – READ THESE, SOME HAVE CHANGED

1. Submissions must be your personal.
2. Photos needs to be taken since this contest was announced.
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings, technique and story behind shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com, not me.
5. Include 930px wide image (200KB or less) AND a 2560×1600 sized in email. I know that your photo won’t fall into those exact high rez dimensions, so whatever native resolution you’re using is ok.
6. One submission per person.
7. Use the right SUBJECT line to your email (more info on that below)

Send your best photo by Monday, February 7th at 8AM Eastern to contests@gizmodo.com with ” Levitation” inside the subject line. Save your files as JPGs, and use a FirstnameLastnameLevitation.jpg (960px wide) and FirstnameLastnameLevitationWallpaper.jpg (2560px wide) naming conventions. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) inside the body of the email such as a story of the shot in a couple of sentences. And don’t skip this story part because it’s often one of the most enjoyable part for us all beyond the shot itself!

My new project Philanthroper is an everyday deal site, but in place of selling you something, we’re presenting you with the prospect to donate $1 to a new nonprofit on a daily basis.

Source

This post is tagged: digital tools, fishing line, melvin sokolsky, native resolution, zero gravity