How To: Photograph Yourself In The Air (Levitation Photography)

After the success of new Internet photography sensation and Tokyo teenager Natsumi Hayashi, I was waiting for someone to come out with a how-to inspired by her, and now we have it. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months and you missed Natsumi’s photographs, I put a few below for you to see. Her hobby is photographing herself levitating. Many people have done this before, but her photos have a bizarrely fascinating and mystical quality to them.

After seeing so many of her pictures on different blogs, I’ve decided it has to do with her facial expressions. Instead of having a wildly smiling “look, I’m flying” look on her face, she always has a natural look on her face, as if to say, “yeah, I can fly, so what.” She achieved this effect by jumping in the air tons of times while trying to capture it using a super fast shutter speed to freeze frame her action.

Kai, from Digital Rev, was very inspired by Natsumi’s photographs and decided to create a how-to for levitation photography. This hilarious video confirms what I’ve thought all along, and that is, levitation photography is all about making it look easy in the photos, but in reality, it’s very tricky. I don’t know that I’ll be trying this anytime soon, but it’s a great tutorial for anyone who wants to learn this art. You can learn more about Natsumi and see more of her photographs on Yowayowacamera. If you take any pictures like this, please come back and leave a link for us. We’d love to check them out!