Before we go on and speak about gravity-defying photographs, let's take a step back and look at the origins of motion photography. In a bold move back in 1872, Leland Stanford, the former governor of California and a savvy railroad tycoon who would go on to establish Stanford University, made a daring decision.
Fueling an ongoing debate whether, during its gait, all four of a horse's hooves are simultaneously off the ground, he sought to settle the score once and for all. His solution? Hiring the eccentric English photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, to capture the elusive truth.
Muybridge, driven by this audacious challenge, embarked on a six-year quest to unravel the mysteries of the stallion movement. In a groundbreaking experiment, he strategically positioned twelve trip-wire cameras along a racetrack, aiming to freeze every stride of a galloping horse.
After a while, he had it: a fleeting instant when the majestic beast soared through the air, liberated from earthly constraints, with not a single hoof touching the ground. Perhaps the first levitation photo in the history of photography which paved the way for motion pictures.
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Now that we know a silly bet propelled the way for moving pictures, let's get back to the present day - a time when technology allows us to plant cameras on pretty much anything (thanks, GoPro!) and bend the laws of gravity without using only a pinch of Photoshop. But what is it about these gravity-defying stills that capture our attention?
Well, for one, this style of photography may seem effortless and whimsical, but it demands meticulous planning, technical expertise, and flawless execution. Also, a lot of experimentation, as Erick Hercules, a Sony Alpha Ambassador whose gravity-defying works have been featured on billboards in Times Square and auctioned at the Guggenheim Museum, told us.
"When I started out, I was not aware of levitation photographers. It was years later I discovered Natsumi Hayashi who was doing the same some years earlier," Hercules explained to Bored Panda over an email. However, Hercules attributes his initial inspiration to a serendipitous encounter with a 2006 Lacoste campaign by Tom Munro, a London-based fashion photographer, right across from Lincoln Center, across the street from where he studied.
"That image always stuck with me. So when I first started in 2014, I kind of replicated the person jumping. It was a couple of months later that I began to develop and experiment with my own different techniques. At first with my hand in the picture and then later throwing things in the air and making them appear like they were really floating."
It was only a few years after that, the Hercules technique really kicked off, inspiring him to launch the #WeLevitate movement in 2015, a global community of aspiring levitation photographers under the slogan of "original no-photoshop levitation creators."
As Hercules tells us, "It quickly became a global niche for dancers and photographers who were into this sort of aesthetic. Some of them helped further the way in which levitation was used so they became part of the team." #WeLevitate is currently endorsed by Sony, Nike, World of Dance, as well as artists like J Balvin.
"Most of the visual stories being told through levitation have a high degree of tension that needs resolution," Hercules explained, noting that he enjoys the surrealistic quality gravity-defying photography employs. "As humans, we are creatures that search for stability, but by showing a subject in mid-air, we are taking away the 'before and after' of the image, leaving the audience in a state of limbo, giving them a chance to question 'How was this done?'"
Speaking of achieving such mind-bending pictures, Hercules says a truly remarkable levitation image possesses three essential elements: sharpness, refinement, and composition. "Sharp because the object needs to look still. Otherwise, blur adds motion to the stillness, taking away from the momentum that makes levitation so special. Refined, because the subject needs to have grace."
Whether it's a person in mid-jump or an object suspended in mid-air, flawless execution is key to conveying the illusion of weightlessness. A tense, awkward posture betrays the act as a mere jump, while an out-of-place object disrupts the elegant levitation narrative, appearing more haphazard than ethereal.
