Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Levitation

One of the things that I like about digital photography
is that you can manipulate things. However, in the case of these
photos of levitating objects, there is no manipulation going on.
As usual, click to see the pictures full-size.

For instance, this is what I call The Spoon:

Notice the big shadow on the ceiling behind the spoon,
the result of the flash to illuminate this floating object.
This is not trickery, that is the way shadows appear when a
bright light source is extremely close to the object.

You get the same effect when you put your hand very close to a
floodlight. Since your hand is very close to the light, almost
covering it up, you see the shadow of your hand looking like a
big spider covering up the entire wall.

We see a similar shadow next to the levitating toy car:

The pictures below are a comb, and a hairbrush:

This last one is one of my shirts, magically floating in air:


But the only manipulation here is simply tossing these objects
into the air, and 'freezing' them with the flash.
Pretty cool, huh?

Peace be with you.

10 comments:

  1. Wow... so now not only can I walk on (frozen) water... now I can make things (appear to) levitate... I'm going to rule the world!

    MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA (that's my evil world-ruling laugh)

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  2. You know I'm gonna break some stuff tomorrow when I try this.

    I wonder if the cat would mind a little air time? Hmmm.....

    I wonder what would happen if you tossed the camera in the air?

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  3. Wicked. I'm going to do this. I just have to be careful not to tip off my nephew first.

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  4. Did you wash the spoon before putting it back in the drawer??? ;)

    Look....it's ME. Stopping by YOUR blog!! Yayyy! :)

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  5. For a moment there--at the beginning of the post--I was going all "OH MY GOD THIS IS SO COOL AND INSANE HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN?". It's a good thing you wrote the trick at the end of the post, or else I was going to spread the word that you're some kind of Harry Potter or something! :P

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  6. Oh, too bad I gave it away! But not really, even if I didn't say how it was done, someone would have figured it out, or just assumed it was photo-shopped, as anything these days can be faked. The huge shadows behind the objects LOOK fake... but that is really how they came out.

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  7. My camera would probably show a blur of the object being thrown. But that is really neat stuff.

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  8. Until you told me I was convinced they really were levitating. I'm a little gullible.

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  9. Cool man! I like your floating shirt the best. It resembles the Dementor's in Harry Potter!

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  10. Yes, Kato, now that you mention that, it does kind of.

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