When we were kids, we would watch a magician make a woman float in air and we would be left in awe, wondering how he had done it.

Fast-forward to today and you can work that magic yourself with your camera and a little Adobe Photoshop editing. The technique is called levitation photography and it’s a great way for any photo-grapher to get creative. Just open a browser, go to Google Images or Pinterest, run a quick search for levitation photography and you’ll find ample shots for inspiration, including some original wedding photos, moody and sinister shots (generally in the woods), indoor shots using objects rather than people, and some cool studio shots of food, like a chopped up piece of fruit with each part in air.

These shots can really make your work pop and give you the perfect avenue for creating some cool outside-the-box concepts. What’s more, levitation photography doesn’t necessarily require hours of editing and it’s relatively easy to get a good result if you prepare well.

There are two main methods: the jump method and the support method. Let’s explore both.

• The jump method

You need: camera, tripod, remote trigger and model (or yourself).

Your model needs to jump as high as possible and you capture that jump as fast as you can, so play around with your aperture and shutter speed before you start shooting. Setting the camera to continuous shooting mode will help you get as many potential frames as possible. The trick here is to get your model to make the jump look like it’s not a jump: the point is for the subject to make it seem as if they are floating in the air.

Although this is the easiest method in terms of the processing as you only have one shot to work on, I find this method a little bit limiting. It can also turn into a workout as the poor model will need to keep jumping until you get the shot you’re happy with. Moreover, you depend on the model to be able to actually pull it off for the end result to look natural.

• The support method

You need: Camera, tripod, remote trigger, model (or yourself), a stool or something your model can rest on.

The advantage with this method is that you can plan your composition, help your model set the pose right without the need to sweat through all those jumps, and use as many props as you like.

However, the support method requires a lot of preparation. In fact, the skill in this type of photography is in the preparation itself.

Once you’ve decided on the setting, lighting and pose, you need to place your camera on a sturdy tripod, set your settings manually (you’ll need to keep using the same settings for your second shot), prepare a remote trigger and take a shot of the background, excluding the model and support.

Keeping the camera set in the exact same position, you can now have your model pose for you on the support and in whichever pose you had in mind. It’s very important that you shoot with a remote trigger as even the slightest shake to the camera can ruin the final result.

This is where the planning is highly important. Two mistakes I made in my shot, which I could have prevented, were the lighting and the type of support I used for my model. I used two diffused flashguns on the side that was opposite the sunlight to fill in the area. It didn’t work out the way I wanted it to and it looked unnatural. Short of time, I didn’t buy a stool (which would have been ideal) so I made do with a small ladder. It was sunny and the sky was clear, but it was terribly windy. Although the wind did add to the effect and gave the impression my model Steffi Thake was genuinely going to be blown away, it made it very difficult and almost dangerous for Steffi to keep her balance and as you can see from the image, it exposed the ladder. This meant extra work for me when editing which could have easily been avoided.

So take note: plan, plan and plan. Don’t just think of the location, theme and model. You have to think about every single detail, from the material of the dress the model will be wearing and the type of support you need to additional lighting and how to use it for the effects you want.

If you’re shooting outdoors, plan for the weather conditions you’re shooting in and have a second plan just in case the weather turns out to be different to what the weather forecast said it would be. These might sound obvious now, but looking back, I know that although at the time of the shoot I thought I planned things well, a little more planning would have made the editing easier.

• Post-processing

This can be very easy if you planned well as all you need is to open the two images in Photoshop by clicking on file, then scripts, then load files into stack and then browse for the files you want, select your photos and click OK. You’ll see the two images in the layers palette, the top one being the one with the model and the bottom just the background.

Select the top layer and click the add layer mask button. A white mask should appear to the right of the thumbnail of the layer. Select the brush tool and make sure the colour of the brush is black, and then select the mask tool. You can now start painting over the stool and any other item you want to be removed from the image. So basically what you’re doing is making these areas transparent and instead letting that area from the background layer come through.

Apart from the usual edits for exposure, colour and clean ups, that’s pretty much it. The important part with the post-processing is to make sure that whatever you do doesn’t make the final image look unnatural or unrealistic.

Christina Goggi is a content marketing and SEO professional and a photography enthusiast. For more of her work visit www.christinagoggiphotography.com.