This is one of my favourite photos from our honeymoon in Guernsey last year. I’d wanted to get a good hovering shot for ages but I’d never tried it at that point. This was my first attempt of the thirty that it took to finally get the shot I was happy with.
So much is wrong with this image, that it becomes right again. I love the wonky horizon. The chopped-off head. The landscape orientation rather than portrait. The addition of the washed-out colour effect and the rounded corners really suits it, I think.
A very pregnant Sarah in the background, wandering around the beach while I carry on, tells its own story.
I am now quite good at the floating shot. I still don’t have a remote for my camera, so rely entirely on jumping at the right moment during the camera’s ten-second countdown. I am also training my stepdaughter to float, and she’s getting quite good at it.
Summer’s a good time for floating, as it requires fast shutter speeds to hide the movement. Here’s how to do it:
- Set camera on a tripod, rock, bag, or other firm surface.
- Use as short focal length as possible to get as much in as possible.
- Use a large-ish aperture again to keep shutter speeds as high as possible, but not so large that keeping yourself in focus will become a problem.
- Set the lens on manual focus and focus on the ground where you will be floating.
- Set the timer going. You now have 10 seconds.
- Walk to the position and get ready to float.
- You need to jump so that when the shutter fires you are 10cm from the ground – either on the up stroke or the down one.
- Jump and keep your arms straight, or folded, or otherwise natural looking. Keep your feet pointing outwards and your legs straight. Try to look serious.
- Run back to the camera, realise that you have mis-timed and then repeat steps 5-9 as many times as necessary. My record was 47.
- If your camera has an AEB mode (auto exposure bracketing), set this up one stop either side. This will cause your camera to take three shots which gives you more chance to time it right. One will be very slightly underexposed, and one over, but you can easily correct that.
Take a look at my Floating set on Flickr.
Of course, you could just try the smoke and mirrors version where you simply position yourself (and the camera) at just the right angle to make it look as if both feet are off the ground when in reality one is on tiptoe. Much easier, and much quicker. Can get some awesome angles etc as well..
Otherwise awesome photos!
Thank you, Owain. I’ll have to try the tiptoe approach, but I have to say I enjoyed doing it for real! Do you have any examples yourself?
©2010 Michael Scott
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