Nikon D7000, 18-105mm lens at 18mm f/8 1/320s and ISO 100. Two remote
flashes firing via a wireless trigger, one right at the background and
the other just to the camera’s right.
After scratching my head as to what I could do to illustrate
levitation, and given the cold temperatures outside, I figured, “Why
not just toss the girlfriend’s teddybear around?”. Dylan was quick to
gallop into frame and see what was going on.
-Alex Amato
Hasselblad 500c
portra 400vc
tripod
This is one of the pictures of my series “Fly away”
The idea is everybody can fly when listening or playing good music, read intersting book, fall in love, e.t.c
I’ve made 3 shoots from one point – a room, a girl on small table and a room whith flying note pages
Then just erased table)
So ths picture is maximum natural))
– Anka Zhuravleva
Canon Rebel T2i, 18-135 IS lens 18mm focal length, ISO of 6400 (noisy) f stop of 3.5 1/200 shutter speed. Only post processing was sending through Noiseware. This image was of my brother jumping off a snow bank, the lighting was fading fast so I really had to pump up the iso, to this degree and this image was the best of the series.
– Bennett Tomlin
Camera body: Canon Rebel T1i
Lens: Sigma EX 10-20mm 4.0-5.6 Canon EF
ISO: 400
Aperture: 4.5
focal length: 14mm
Shutter Speed: 1/60
When I saw this shooting challenge i thought it would be an awesome opportunity to try my hand at a challenge. So when thinking of levitation I instantly had the vision of someone meditating and levitating the objects around them. Since i had no one around i stood in as the model and composed this shot of 12 compiled images all shot in situ using a tripod and a remote timer as well as photoshop to create vector masks to eliminate strings. hope its not too sloppy!
Cheers
– Brenton weist
Location: Jardin des Tuileries – Paris, France
Equipment:
Nikon F3
Fuji Provia 100 Color Reversal Film
Nikkor 50mm 1.4
Epson V500 Scanner
Story:
I shot this in France with my fiance (lady in picture) and had never tried this with film before but was so in love with how it came out! It almost looks photoshopped but outside of a little color correction this photo is unaltered. We tried this twice… the first time I metered on the background and 2nd time metered on the subject… to no surprise the latter of the two worked out better!
Thank you for the consideration,
– Brian Chaszar
Hi to everyone at Gizmodo! This photoshoot was really fun and tedious for me. It was shot with a
– Nikon D50
– Nikkor 18-55 lens
– 147 ISO
Noticing that I’m not much of a fisher, I instead plucked a string from a spare cello bow and used that. Works great, although it was hard tying a loop to fit the iPhone exactly. After attaching the string to my iPhone, I tied the other end to a piece of cardboard, and laid a heavy book on top of that. It was dangling from a 2 and a half feet tall table. This way, it was easy to adjust how high I wanted my iPhone to dangle. I took about 15 pictures before deciding which was the best angle, loaded it into GIMP for Mac, and blurred out the bow string. This all took about an hour, give or take.
Thanks for your time,
– Brian Zhao
The story behind this is truly the best. I was at Winter Jam in
Louisville and managed to nab fourth row seats (first come first serve
seating). My sister arrived late and I had been saving a seat for her,
and naturally she came in as one of my favorite groups, (Red –
pictured here) was performing. As we got back to our seats they
started jumping and I took this picture on a whim to see if it would
turn out. There was no real technique to it, just luck and my little
point and shoot Fujifilm Finepix Z20 tried it’s hardest. 😀
– Caitlyn Bowyer
Camera: Nikon d40
Lens 18-55mm kitlens
Sb26 bounced
Donut halo
I was eating donuts while reading this weeks challenge and that gave me the idea of a floating donut.I use three tooth picks to hold the dont up and edited them out in Photoshop.
Regards
– Cameron Bird
Canon 7D, f/8.0, 30 second exposure, ISO 100. Only 1 shot. Using a mystery prop mixed with some of my jumping skills ;-). Speedlite attached to stand facing directly above me, fired manually 3 seconds into the shot. Once I landed, I took the blue and red lights out of my left pocket (hidden from view) and completed the light painting. Only the Speedlite and jumping prop were removed with photoshop.
– Casey Sjorgren
Hi There!
So here’s the story on this photo. My coworkers and I went to lunch at a Chinese restaurant to celebrate the Chinese New Year. We were lucky enough to arrive while there was a Chinese Lion Dance going on. This photo was taken toward the end of the dance. The “lion” is attempting to reach the cabbage and money attached to the roof. I completely forgot about the challenge until after I took the picture, and I figured, “why not?”
Because this wasn’t a planned photo, I took it on my Droid 2 Global. I did some color adjustments, but that’s about it. According to Aperture, here’s the info:
ISO: 116(?)
f/2.8
Technique: Some pretty good guesses on timing because of the delay between hitting the shutter and the camera actually taking the shot.
Thanks!
– Cy Shimizu
I took this image while working in the studio with my younger sister. My main goal was experimenting with lighting, for this image I used three soft boxes. The shoot itself took about an hour and the only editing that was done to the image was smudging out the fishing line attached to the apple.
Shot with a Canon 30D with a 55mm-250mm lens, ISO 250, F/7.1, 1/200
– Dani Polson
Nikon D3000, AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm lens, 1/10 exposure time, f/4.5
Believe it or not, babies aren’t much into toys they cant play with. Therefore, although babies love toys, toys hanging too far out of reach are not worth much of their attention. This shot was a lot of fun to do though, the fact that the Baby was reaching for the toys made for a really cool ‘lifting’ effect. I used photoshop to get the white (probably not the best choice, but i used what i had) thread out of the shot. other than that, a tad bit of darkening and Blam! Great Levitation shot.
– Delyn Stirewalt
Running out of time to get creative, and with blowing snow outside options were limited. I decided to take a simple photo of the tea pot on the kitchen table. Since it was dark out already and thus no ambient light to give the photo a interesting and open feel I turned to an off camera flash. The flash was shot with an umbrella to the left of the frame and I tried to balance it as well as I could with the incandescent lighting to make it feel like window light. After that it was simply a matter of taking 3 shots, one with the background, one with the tea pot pouring and levitating, and one with the saucer levitating (I choose three shots to better control the shadows from the flash). This was then put together in Photoshop using masks to remove the ‘support’ portions from each layer. Shot with 7D, 17-50 @ 3.2, 1/125 sec, ISO 800, 480ex with umbrella camera left @ 1/64.
-Dustin Derkach
Equipment Used:
Camera: Nikon D5000
Lens: Nikkor 50mm 1.8/f
Flash: SB-15
Softwares:
Adobe Photoshop CS5
Camera Raw 6
Setup:
I had setup the camera on a mini tripod with the flash bounced off ceiling at 45°. I used a couple of home-made reflectors too and with a little ambient light from the window coming in the room. For the banana I had fixed the slices on a wooden skewer and later removed it in Photoshop. I used a white chart paper for the backdrop held by a side table behind it. I shot this picture in RAW with a 50mm prime lens without auto-focus nor CPU contact.
EXIF Data:
Shutter Speed: 1/180 sec.
Aperture: 2.8/f
ISO: 100
Exposure Program: Manual
White Balance: Manual
– Fawzan Hasan
I have been following the challenges for quite a while. My girlfriend is a great photographer and we have been meaning to do some challenges, and has given me many tips. I decided to jump into this challenge without any help and see what i could do. Unfortunately i wanted to make this shot outside to get some real sky background, but it wont stop snowing here in OH. I also wanted to have my kids remote controlled helicopter chase the Iron Man, but it turned out to be hard to keep the helicopter steady inside the frame. So i shot this indoors. I used a hakuba tripod, Fujifilm S700 camera. Details: 63mm with a Seikos UV glare lense, ISO 64, f4, exp 1.5 sec, WB tungsten. I use some fishing line to hold the Iron Man in the air, tied between the ceiling fan and a hook on the ceiling. The picture is 100% unedited.
Thanks
– Felix Garcia
No Photoshop was used to create this illusion, it was done completely with perspective. The model is lying on a small sawhorse and only has to raise her arms, legs and head. The sheet obscures the sawhorse. Unfortunately the bunching fitted sheet is a telltale sign of pressure on the mattress. If I was going to do this again, I’d put a piece of plywood on the bed under the fitted sheet, so that it was both easier for the model to balance and so that the fitted should wouldn’t bunch.
I shot this with a Leica X1 at f2.8, 1/60s, ISO400. Overhead lights and flash made this too bright, so I clamped a spotlight to the ladder I was shooting from to cast some strange shadows.
– Fred Facker
“Colossal Construction”
For this challenge I decided to simulate a group of objects free falling and in all actuality they’re levitating, suspended in air, with no movement at all……
The pre production alone on this one took three hours (no exaggeration). This ended up being a family affair(otherwise it would have taken me a lot longer), by the time I was done everyone in my entire household had participated in some way. I started by poking holes through the tin can, hooking rings to fishing line and attaching it with tacks to the ceiling. I then taped various sizes of fishing line to each piece, again attaching it to the ceiling with tacks. This may have sounded like a quick process, but trust me, it was not! After I had each piece placed where they needed to be, I worked on lighting. I took a table, balanced a lamp with the shade off from the left corner, just outside the shot. This was shot in my basement in which the recess lighting acted as a filler. Once I had taken the shot, I moved on to the post production. This was much easier and a lot less time consuming, after the pre production taking up most of the time. I(and my family) had a lot of fun with this challenge!
Shot on February 5, @ 7:31 pm
Camera Body: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: 28-70 f/2.8L USM
ISO 320
Focal Length: 28mm
f/6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/8
-George Westlake
The hardware: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33. There are no settings, the camera is a point-and-shoot.
The story: I’ve been visiting New Zealand, wandering around Wellington with a friend. I’ve been here about a week now, and it’s been mostly rainy. Today is overcast but there have been some breaks for sun. I captured this levitating ball of silver fern during one of those fleeting moments of sun. As you can see the clouds are still omnipresent. We were leaving Te Papa to get our munch on in Manners Mall when we walked under this. She tells me it’s called Mieach Fowler Centre, but all I know is, even in person it levitates.
The software: this is held up by wires, they’re mostly faint in person, and in fact walking near it you can’t see them unless you look for them. I removed the wires, leaving just the levitating ball of silver fern.
– Holland Rhodes
Hi,
This is my first entry to the great Gizmodo photography competition. I have this Eurofighter Typhoon model I built hanging from my speaker on the wall and just liked the shape of the shadow it cast with my overhead lights, so I thought I’d take a few shots of it and give the levitation competition a go. I hope somebody likes it.
Cannon EOS 300D
18-55mm Cannon lens
ISO 200
F number 3.5
Exposure time 1/13
– Huw Willis-Wood
< Living in Seattle its hard to ignore Boeing, and when it comes to "Levitation" no one does it better than them :) Camera Nikon D90 Exposure 0.3 Aperture f/5.6 Focal Length 105 mm ISO Speed 400 Exposure Bias 0 EV - Vineesh Devasia Shot with Canon 50D, 50mm lens, f/2.8, ISO 200 My initial idea was to create a "Rain of Apples". As I was setting up the apples on strings, my kitty decided he wanted to play. In the end I found that his presence in the shot gave a bit more realism to the suspended apples. Photoshop was used to hide the strings. - Irina Banyik Camera = Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi Lens = 18-55mm ISO = 400 Exposure = 1/8000 F-stop = F/9 This is my first photo shoot contest that I entered in. Some of my buddies and me were out camping the other weekend on Cayo Costa and just messing around on the beach. I decided to do some high speed photography while they were jumping off of the dunes. This was the best shot that came out of it! - Jannik Milberg I was outside at my local University and I happen to see this squirrel. I thought to myself, "levitate squirrel". Then the squirrel jumped and I caught it. I was like WOW. I'll use this photo. I LOVE Gizmodo Camera: Canon Rebel T2i Lens: 55-250mm 3.5/5.6 IS Settings: ISO 800 f/5.6 1/1600 at 250mm - Jeffrey Perkins shooting mode: manual Tv: 1/1250 Av: 1.8 ISO speed: 100 white balance: auto Canon Kiss X4 + Canon EF 50mm f1.8 when me and my friends decided to take the photo challenge with some twist, at IT park, Lahug, Cebu City, Philippines - Jesryl Caballero This was my first contest where I took the picture first then I saw the challenge post. I went to one of my favorite burger joints for lunch and I was just playing with the camera until my food arrived. I was taking photos of random food objects on the table like the ketchup bottle and the salt shaker. When my drink came I positioned the glass where the bokeh was in the frame on both corners of the picture. I was using the light from the windows on the right and the neon lights in the background. I had the camera hand held but the lens leaning on the edge of table. After I had seen the contest I reviewed the pictures from earlier that day and I noticed that the coaster was levitating the glass. I removed the coaster form under the glass and punch up the colors in photoshop. Here is my camera equipment: Nikon D7000 35mm 1.8G f/1.8 ISO 200 1/15 sec. thanks, - Jesus Zendejas In order to get this shot I set up my camera on a tripod in front of the dart board. I threw the dart in front of the camera and snapped the shot. It took me about 200 tries to get it in focus and centered. I shot it at f/11 with a 1/200 second exposure. My focal length is 29mm and the ISO is 200. I lit it using available light from the windows and a camera mounted flashgun. - John Chapman Title: Flying like a Superhero Camera: Canon 550D Focal Length:18 Exposure: 1/320 Lens: Default Canon Image Stabilizer Dimensions: 2300x3450 Was on a trip with my family and my cousin was playing around in the playground. I decided to take some pictures. Later, I realized that there was a photography contest on Gizmodo so I chose this picture. - Johnson Ko This was taken with a Canon Rebel XS using the stock 18-55mm lens opened up to f/5.6 and exposed for 1/60s at ISO400. I placed a superconducting wafer (the big black disc) in a shallow petri dish of liquid nitrogen from BU's Photonics laboratory. After allowing it to cool for a few minutes, i placed a small neodymium magnet (the white cube) in the space just above the wafer. The superconductor's magnetic field was so strong that it overcame gravity, trapping the neodymium magnet in a state of delicate suspension. After some time, frost developed on the magnet, so I placed a red shirt under the dish to act as a background and had a friend light the magnet from above with a flashlight as I snapped away. - Jonah Siefer Camera : Canon rebel T2i. Lens : Canon 60mm USM Macro F : 2.8 Speed : 1/60 ISO : 400 Title : Luke ! Get out ! And bring back this droids with you ! History behind the shoot : I think this challenge is one of the coolest so far. At first, I doesn't have a clue on how to approach it. After browsing several pictures that uses the levitation trick, I realize that it would be better try something small and simple to get started with. So, to build the set I use my black leather jacket, a pole, some fishing line to hang a few action figures, and a piece of Aluminium thin foil to direct some sun light into my little "Studio". After everything was in place, the actual tricky step is to actually build a photo that, at least try, to tell a history. After fighting a lot with the fishing line, with a lot of tape, finally everything come together and I got the picture. From the original picture to the "one", very small portions of changes were made with the Aperture, just wipe out the fishing line and correct a little bit the exposure. Keep The challenges comming !! Cheers ! - José Gustavo Z. Rosa Nikon 300s 35.0mm f1.8 1/50 at f 2.0 ISO 400 ambient light Before I saw this contest my friend had given me a small cigarette ad and I had been meaning to do something with it. I was surfing Gizmodo when I happened to look at my pack of cigarettes. I thought of something like rising from the ashes and this is what I came up with. No extensive set up just a tooth pick (couldn't find fishing line at home) taped to a pen taped to a cup. Taken handheld in my kitchen by a window to back-light the smoke. Not a whole lot of editing I just smudged and cloned out the toothpick. I then converted it to a toned monochrome. My first entry hope you enjoy. Thanks, - Juan A. Cardenas My son and me jumping. We do this all the time. The first one was done last year and we decided to do this every year until I can't jump anymore. I used Nikon D7000 on tripod. Trigger with remote. Flash through softbox. All triggered by Yong Nuo. Thanks, - Juan Gonzalez Took the tripod out and simply timed and threw a bunch of chunks of snow. Took a couple of tries to get it right. Neighbors think I'm weird now. Canon Powershot sx110 is 1/800 sec f/2.8 - Kalden Dhatsenpa Here's my submission for the Levitation challenge - thank god this came up - this is also doubles as a class assignment of shooting a pencil or pen that I was desperately needing inspiration for. Setup: I used natural lighting and took the shot on a tripod and triggered the shot using a remote in my mouth. Shot with a Canon EOS 60D with a Canon EF50mm f/1.4 USM Lens. Aperture was at 2.5 with the shutter speed at 80 and ISO at 160. No flash, manual exposure. I used the camera's articulating LCD screen to get the shot correct. The idea behind this is the whole idea of creativity with a pen - and how it doesn't have to be drawing to be interesting. I wanted to get away from the idea of the pen / pencil as a utensil we use to make something creative and have the object actually be the thing that is creative. I always think of how kids come up with different and crazy ways to use things that are "wrong" and how a kid may never use a pen as something completely different. I'm basically a five year old kid and have a mass array of silly novelty pens laying around. I used clear thread to tie to the pen in two different places, then wrapped around my hand and stretched to create the effect. Cloned out some lines from the string in Photoshop, then added some lighting effects through High Pass Filers and what not. Finally just added some light streaks because I felt like it. It's not really a reason, but there you have it. Well thanks for inspiring me! - Katherine Kellner Nikon D2X, 50mm f/1.4, ISO 100 I made the chair out of a compress wood "i" beam and had a 2x4 as a counter "leg' to support the chair leaning back. The apple was shot with the same camera set up and was suspended using 3 toothpicks. - Kyle Camerer Shooting settings: Canon EOS 5D Lens: 50mm f/1.8 aperture: f/1.8 shutter speed: 1/80 second ISO 160 This is my cat, Rolo, who is a giant scaredy-cat, which made it quite difficult to take this photo. Every time I got him on the pillow, he would immediately jump off, knocking everything over, and scurry out of the room. I finally got him to stay put long enough to take this photo by leaving a few pieces of dry cat food on the pillow for him to munch on. I used a tripod, and set the pillow up on a small stool. One image with the stool and cat in the photo and one without made it easy enough to remove the stool. -Laurel C Scott After peeking about the links provided in the contest info, I had the plan in my head to create a montage shot of things blowing in the wind. The first attempt in my house was a failure, so I took advantage of the day off due to the Snowpocalypse to try it at my church. I failed again with some small lights in a small room, and in a last ditch attempt, took my props on the stage and fired up our church's $100,000 light system to get the proper lighting needed for the shooting. I got it done in about an hour with my accomplice (Flying through the air), with another hour layering the shots together in Photoshop, thankfully without much fuss. Hope it's not the worst-looking one of the batch! Camera Info: Canon T2i, f/4.5, Exposure time: 1/100 sec, ISO-400. - Loren Klein The Power of the Cube Shutter speed 1/6", f5.3, ISO 800. Nikon D3000 with 18-55mm VR DX Lens. For this challenge, I thought it would be cool to do a "force levitation" type thing. I strung the cube up with a piece of black string, turned off the lights in my room, and used 3 Maglites to light it all up. Took about 40 shots, but I ended up liking this one the best! Very little post processing, just touching up the black background a bit and noise reduction (there was a fair bit of noise in the black due to high ISO) along with resizing. - Louis Levine First attempt at a Gizmodo challenge. First project in GIMP. Wish I could have edited this picture more, but all I know right now is the conversion to greyscale (which I used). Anyway, I took many shots with just the spoon and they were of better quality, but would require a little work to to remove all traces of sewing thread. I haven't gotten to that point in the GIMP manual yet! Darn. This shot just happened to disguise the thread (for the most part) and ultimately I fell in love with the look on my daughter's face. While she was probably thinking, "Enough with the spoon Mom!" I think it looks like she is concentrating, and doing the levitation herself. Olympus Digital u850SW (nothing fancy here, just point and shoot) f/3.5 1/125 sec. ISO-800 - Amanda Bodnar Hooray! I finally got around to submitting a photo for one of your contests. After I read this week's challenge, my wife and I began brainstorming ideas. My initial thought was to do something ironic concerning gravity—like something heavy. We mulled over a few other ideas, like doing an action figure scene in mid-air, having toys escaping the thrift store by jumping into my bag, toast popping out of the toaster. Finally, my wife came up with a genius idea of doing something with apples and Isaac Newton. I was sold. I did a little research and scoped out the Ohio University Library for a good location and checked out "The Principia" for the shot. We went back a few days later with a variety of apples, a few yardsticks, some string, and my camera gear. We suspended the apples from string tied to a yardstick spanning the aisle between the stacks. I initially wanted to do more apples, but due to constrictions of a quiet environment I chose just two: a red delicious and a granny smith. In ACR, I developed three different exposures of the same shot: one for the apples, one for my wife's face, and one for the background. Then, I imported them into PS, did some layer masking, cloned out the strings, and adjusted the brightness. The title of my photo is a direct reference to Isaac Newton's universal law of gravitation from "The Principia." Title: "Proposition 75, Theorem 35" Body: Canon EOS Rebel Xti Lens: SigmaEX 30mm 1:1.4 ISO: 800 f/2.8 1/40 sec - Matthew Vajen I used my Canon Rebel EOS T1i (my pride and joy) for this shot, utilizing a standard 18-55mm kit lens. I used Shutter Priority with the speed set to 1/40, ISO 800, f/5. Due to dismal lighting conditions, I jacked the EV up 2 stops and prayed for the best. - Micheal Antonakes Shot on: Canon 550D ISO: 100 LENS: sigma 24mm SPEED/APERTURE: 1/640 F2.8 Well the story goes like this. Gizmodo is my daily new site for me. Being an inventor myself and a amateur photographer, when I saw the shooting challenge I thought it was right up my alley. I levitate as a hobby, so it was just a simple snap of the camera. I took the picture in my yard. Thanks, - Mike Champagne Description: Me and my girlfriend during a gravitational failure this Thursday. This is a composite image made from 32 photos. Everything was captured in situ. A lot of hours went into planing, shooting and post-production for this one. I guess this is my most elaborate photo till now. I used various techniques for levitating. Smaller objects were on strings that were easily removed later on. Bigger objects like the couch were supported on piles of books. I had to take multiple photos and change the position of book piles so I could mask them out in post-production. We "levitated" on a ladder. It was important to wear an unzipped hoodie or a skirt in her case, to hide the ladder. I made at least 3 photos of every object in different positions, which turned out to be crucial in the end, because lots of photos were scrapped due to object overlapping, screwed up shadows etc. Canon 450D with kit lens set at 18mm. Same exposure settings used for all the photos (1/8s @ f/8, ISO 200). Best Regards. - Niksa Stanovic 1. Camera used was a Canon XTi with 18-55 basic lens. 2. I lit the room with one of my two lights from my light kit. 3. I took a picture of the room without any of the floating objects in it. Then I used a stool and stood on that. Using a remote I took the pictures of myself. Then I took the photos of the Star Wars lunch box and Mumford & Sons vinyl with the same process and edited out my hands. I had my mother hold our Corgi, Angel closer to the camera and edited out my mother. I included a small image that is without Angel in it also so so you can see more of me and how I was in the photo also. If you would like more of the before and after images please let me know. :) 4. As for story. The things floating around me are 3 of my favorite things. My Corgi, Angel...Mumford & Sons...Star Wars. <3 this is part of a 365 day photo challenge that i'm doing. was 37 it. my pictures can be found on tumblr and flickr. thank you, - rachel marie smith i took with pentax k-x the kit lens. while thinking about contest had famous painting pop into head so googled it son man by rene magritte. decided to recreate making look like an invisible person wearing clothes. ran slight problem when arrived at location realized i'd forgotten beautiful, green apple picked out for purpose. go ahead just make homage magritte instead recreation specific work. which works because he did same image no face & in some his other paintings. shirt, jacket borrowed tie (which learn tie) were hanger. used wire piece from towel rack hold hat held place gaffer's tape. balanced whole thing broomstick stuck hole ground. frame right get sky, cooperated being much more cloudy than we're socal, keeping building getting little tree. perfect tree (the palms weren't right) early enough not have hit golden hour yet got great pale blue sky. clone stamped but wasn't working picture shirt's collar layered photoshop then eraser tool reveal collar. expert me. robin rigby knew do something kitchen only room. girlfriend really wanted bake cookies night that's what gave me idea. put her harness roommate up. lot stronger fishing line had. flash oven softbox camera. as photo, dog walked shot. annoyed first think added 2 sticks 1 or them time all over kitchen. after masking remove roommate. everything shot where you see original photos website if you'd like. http:>
