levitation

Creating the story of a phoenix, and setting fire to a man

Posted on September 3, 2014February 26, 2025 by jennyjacobsson

Creating the story of a phoenix, and setting fire to a man

“The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune’s spite; revive from ashes and rise.”*

When Anders came to me to tell his story through my portraits I got so excited. We had worked at the same office before, but I had no idea about the strong and gripping story surrounding his path through life. I feel so fortunate and honored to be one of those he wanted to open up for and to have been invited to hear the full story has truly enriched my own view of life. Hopefully, many more will get the opportunity to sit down with Anders and talk about his interesting life, and even more so, the fantastic transformation he is going through right now to come out a stronger person.

THE STORY OF A PHOENIX

The more he told me about his life the clearer it got that to me Anders is like a phoenix. Transforming in front of our very eyes, shedding his old life, rising from the ashes and coming out in all his splendour. Ready to take on the world again, to spread his wings and fly. Together we took this story and made it into that fabulous imaginative and a bit surreal reality we both are drawn to so much.

How to add fire to a person in Photoshop

SHOOTING, BARBECUING CLOTHES AND SETTING FIRE TO A MAN

So we threw ourselves into creating this image and after loads of conversation and planning to come up with this final vision we went out to the archipelago here outside Göteborg (Gothenburg). The evening was warm and still and we gave ourselves proper time to do all we wanted to do. We had a marvelous picnic that Anders had made. We were barbecuing, not food, but clothes. We shot Anders for about 30 minutes and then we sat down on the warm cliffs and talked and talked watching the sun set.

Preparing clothes for a phoenix, barbecuing and burning fabric

Before any of you think I’m a terribly cruel person, setting fire to a man and pushing him off a cliff, I want to say that the whole shoot was safe. The clothes weren’t actually burning on Anders’s body, but instead the flames were added afterwards with some digital craftsmanship in Photoshop from frames that I took with burning and glowing fabric. “No men were harmed in this photography session” 😉

“ALL THE PREPARATION”

Since Anders seemed to have such a wonderful time through all of the process creating this portrait, later on I asked him what he found the very most fun part of it all. And it was so great to hear that he had enjoyed immensely the whole preparation phase, planning everything and the time we met up to tear up his clothes, and then later going into the photography day. And well… I couldn’t agree with him more 🙂

*Quote: Miguel de Cervantes, The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts & Strange Stories (2008) by Varla Ventura

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Making man fly – how to create levitation in Photoshop

Posted on September 25, 2012February 26, 2025 by jennyjacobsson

Making man fly – how to create levitation in Photoshop

This video is a Before & After as well as an accelerated showcase of my post-processing of a several files to a finished conceptual image. Here I’m making man fly by creating levitation with a few Photoshop tricks.

The sky is the limit…

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location | LANGKAWI ISLAND in MALAYSIA
model | ANDREAS GUSTAFSSON

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To sneak peek Behind-the-Scenes, go visit my blog post Man of passage!

‘MAN OF PASSAGE’

conceptual, levitation, Photoshop, portrait, Göteborg

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Check out more of my levitation work featured in Golden Age magazine, and see the interview about being a photographer!

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Posted on November 24, 2010February 26, 2025 by jennyjacobsson

Levitation

And so it was time to answer the next question from my dear readers, and this one is from the delightful Anders Bergkvist, who wrote me a comment in You ask, I tell – The Force of Nature where he wondered “How did you create the levitating impression of your first Flickr Explore image?” (above).

THE PROBLEM

If you’ve ever tried to make a proper jump you probably noticed that it’s difficult to get some distance from the ground at the same time making it look relaxed and without pulling your face. Unless you are perhaps a trained dancer or gymnast. And trust me… I’m certainly not…

LEVITATION AND MONTAGES

Levitation can of course be created in several ways. Like in all photography a good goal to create a realistic effect is to always capture as much as you can in camera, and try to avoid unnecessary manipulation. Since our mind and eyes are really good at noticing if something fishy is going on and if light and shadows don’t add up, it’s quite hard to put a montage together and there are a lot of things to be considered (more about that in a future post).

If I had been graceful enough (and believe me, I’m not) I would have performed this little jump and at the same time managed to pose and turn my torso slightly to create the body shape I was after. I tried, but I can assure you you wouldn’t be pleased with the result.

IMAGES NEEDED TO BE SHOT

Although for this shot I was a bit lucky, or at least I made it quite easy for myself since I didn’t want to levitate beyond belief. I just wanted to take off a little from the ground, like I was floating away. So I needed to shoot images with:

1) stretched legs and pointed toes

2) the shadow on the ground created by the jump

3) the upper body, relaxed and twisted the way I wanted with the face also relaxed and eyes on the ground

PHOTOSHOP PROCESS

After having shot two kinds of shots, one where I took a little jump trying to create good legs, and one kind where I was happy with my upper body, I opened my files in Photoshop. The two images that I’d chosen was put in two different layers on top of each other. Since the upper body layer needed to be placed a bit higher to match my waist, I moved this layer upwards until it fit (you can see how much I moved it in the 2nd image below if you look closely, on the line between the floor and the wall).

When this was done, I hid the “bad legs” from the upper body layer by painting black in my layermask, revealing the jumping legs from the layer below. So that you can this see better, in the 3rd image below I lowered the opacity of the upper body layer so that you can to see the two images together at once (I look a bit like a ghost).

To finish there were a few details that needed to be clone stamped or patched to make everything seemless in the dress, but that was about it for the levitation effect.

So by adding two or more different images into one, you can create the most incredible effects. Give it a try and have some fun with it!

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To wear a dead bird’s wings…

Posted on August 2, 2010February 26, 2025 by jennyjacobsson

To wear a dead bird’s wings…

Welcome to my very first Behind the Scenes! “Broken Wings” derives from a summer’s day when I was taking a walk and my eyes got caught on these semi-decomposed bird wings among the leaves on the ground. And my instinct was of course that I had to wear them! Even though they would only fit a person 40 cm tall…

But since I’m a very stubborn girl I resisted the terrible stench reeking out from them, poked sticks under the “armpits” of the post-bird, and walked around the forest to find a good location.

Luckily it didn’t take long before I ran into this tree stump. The stump was big enough to fit me in it and also it provided a good spot for a levitation trick. Even though the wings were broken I had to at least try to fly with them.

Below, I’ll take you through both the SHOOTING PROCESS and the PHOTOSHOP PROCESS

SHOOTING PROCESS

So I needed three shots to be able to create a girl with wings trying to fly from a tree stump.

1) THE UPPER BODY AND ARMS I put my camera on my tripod, climbed the stump and flung around it in different positions, shooting myself using my Canon RC-1 wireless remote control. Climbed back down, ran to the camera to check on the poses and angles, and ran back to the stump to create better ones. This kept on until I felt like I had been through a tough yoga session and I had a shot I was happy with.

levitation, self portrait, post-processing, Photoshop, conceptual, bird, fly, take off, forest, Behind the scenes

2) THE LEGS To create that levitation look I needed to lift my legs off the stump, not touching it at all with my legs. So back up on the stump I let myself into the same position as in the shot I had chosen, held my body up with my arms and released the legs.

3) THE WINGS were a lot trickier since they were so small (and also very fragile and risked of falling apart any second). Still having the wings on sticks, I first tried to get the correct perspective by putting the wings in the proper place behind the stump with the aim to increase their size later on. Although, I wasn’t happy with the details so instead I tried to lift them in front of and close to the camera. For this part it is very important to keep the same focal length even if the subject is moved around. I was happy with these images and I was done shooting.

“Let me make a note that all this was going on with people walking by… looking like they were going to call the police for them to come get that crazy bird woman running around in the woods with wings, looking like she would need a strait-jacket…“

PHOTOSHOP PROCESS

In Photoshop I combined the two images of the girl in the forest by using the first shot as a main layer, masking over “the wrong legs” and letting through the levitated legs from underneath with some modifications.

After that I cut out one wing at a time, pasted them on the forest image, corrected their positions and angles and let the arms and body of the girl in front of the wings.

For me the story is sad and moody, so I wanted the tone and color of the final image to convey that feeling. I worked with blues and darks and decreasing the yellow in the greens. Some more tweaking and adjustments and VOILÀ!

BROKEN WINGS

A lot of work, full of aches, and marked as a crazy bird woman, but at least I got to wear a dead bird’s wings…

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