Learn How To Levitate

Becoming light enough to float is no easy task. Raising two hundred pounds several feet above the ground requires years of mental conditioning, serenity and balancing one’s chi. It demands complete concentration and an inner discipline unrivaled in eastern cultures. Or, you can do what I did…

I sometimes get in the car on a weekend and drive aimlessly in any direction for an hour or so. It relaxes me to be on the open road and get away from the city sights and sounds. Last Sunday was the perfect time for a cruise to work off some of the Thanksgiving Day calories I had acquired over the long weekend. My most recent trek brought me to Lake Ronkonkoma in Long Island around 2pm. I stopped at a park on the west edge of the lake where locals go swimming during the warmer months. The tiny beach was empty except for a few seagulls and geese. I had it all to myself. Time to pull out the gear.

The Setup:

Nikon D300 with Nikkor 14-24mm 2.8 @ 14mm, mounted on tripod about waist height.

1/250 Shutter Speed, 800 ISO for a slightly grainy feel, f22.

Nikon SB-900 external Speedlight sitting on the sand camera right for fill. Bare at 1/4 power.

Camera’s pop-up flash also used for on-axis fill @ 1/20 power and also to trigger the SB-900.

Direct sunlight hitting just the upper portion of my torso. Everything below that point was hidden in shade provided by a small building directly in front of me.

I could have used a remote trigger for this shot of myself, but you would’ve seen it in my hands. Instead I set the timer to 10 seconds and timed the jump. It took a few tries to get the pose and look I wanted. (Relaxed and natural)

Post Production:

I made some minor level and saturation adjustments in Photoshop, as well as some dodging of the foreground, and then added a vignette to put more emphasis on the subject and overall symmetrical nature of the image. Some of the disturbed sand below me was also cropped to erase any evidence of jumping.