There are generally 2 techniques to create the illusion of levitating. One requires the use of photoshop. The other requires the use of high shutter speeds.
The first approach is the one we chose since it was safer.
Equipment
- Canon T7 with 18-55 mm lens
- Tripod
- A chair or stool which we could easily remove.
Procedure
After deciding on a good location where the background wasn’t too distracting and too cluttered, we placed our camera on a tripod, these were the settings we used focal length 55mm setting, ISO 200 and we chose an aperture of f8 and we centered the meter to get our shutter speed.
Then we placed our subject in position, focused manually on the person. After taking the 1st picture with the person, in the example above, we used a cart, a serape (Mexican blanket) on top of a wooden board, we moved them out of the frame and shot a 2nd picture without them in the same scene.
We had to be very careful not to change the focus, the exposure on the camera between the 2 shots.
Once we were back at our computers, we downloaded our images and imported them into Adobe Lighroom Classic. After culling and choosing our 2 starting files, we selected them, Open them as Layers in the Photo menu>Edit in Adobe Photoshop.
When the 2 pictures opened in Photoshop, they were already stacked one on top of the other when we view the Layers Palette.
We dragged the layer with the person and object they were on on top of the layer without the person.
After adding a white layer mask, we painted with the color black using the brush tool to remove the object the person was laying or sitting on.