Zen college student

Sam is so focused on studying the rules and regulations of the dorm that he actually levitates.

Just kidding, I hung him by wires from the ceiling.

Also kidding. I used my jedi powers.

a.k.a Photoshop...

This is a two part photo. The first photo is of Sam sitting on a table. This is the most common way to do levitation photos. You have you subject on some raised platform and then mask that out later.

To get this, I used two lights. One was a 560 up and to the left. It was gridded with a 1/8th grid, and set to 1/64 power. This light is the main light, and makes the spotlight effect on him. Technically though, the key light in this is the soft box just off to the left. This one filled in the shadows and made Sam recognizable. It also spilled light on the wall behind which made it easier to mask Sam out later. The combination of a hard light (gridded 560) and the soft light (soft box) does wonders on his jacker and shoes. Really brings out the texture and colors of it. 

The next picture I took was just of the background. This included the spot of light on the ground and also the black of the background. I wanted the background to be completely black with only the spot of light on the ground. 

So there's what that looks like. Pretty simple.

Now to composite them. Very simple for this actually. All I had to do was to select Sam out from the first picture, and make that selection a layer mask. The selection was a little messy as it was quick, so I went back in and cleaned it up a bit with a brush. 

At this point it look pretty good. I raised the whites, clarity, and vibrance a bit to give the coat and whatnot more pop. But it still was missing something. It looked too...photoshopped. Like I'd just taken him and stuck him on another picture. The edges where too prefect, the sale too exactly. There wasn't that sense of blur or blending like you get in real life.

To fix this, I duplicated the layer of Sam, then put a massive blur on it. This did two things. It made all the colors blend together, and more importantly it expanded the edges. Essentially I'd just made a glow around Sam. Though this isn't photorealistic at all, it added at little bit of something that was missing to me.

Pretty simple photo in all. Bit of Ps work but not too much on the whole. 

oh and camera setting were the usual. f2.2, ISO100, 1/200. Nothing new. 

See you tomorrow.