Why did I Take a Picture of Myself Jumping in Mid-air?

I don’t know. As I’m building this website, I’m looking for ways to convey myself as someone who is spontaneous and creative. I somehow came to the conclusion that this would be well conveyed with an image of me in mid-air.

While taking the pictures, I felt like a music artist trying to come up with a cool new (sort of cliche) artwork for their upcoming album.

Now the easiest way to go about something like this is to have a friend take the photo for you. Give them a camera and begin taking pictures until you get the result you’re looking for.

But I like to take the “Do It Yourself” route.

Here’s how I did it. With lots of trial and error, and a little bit of public embarrassment.

1. I grabbed my camera and Tripod

The first thing I did was I loaded all of my camera equipment into my car. This included some light reflectors, a tripod, and the camera itself. I’m currently using a Canon M50 DSLR, however any DSLR will do the trick.

With careful planning and considerations, you could also use a modern smartphone if you’re clever enough.

2. I found a suitable location to begin taking picture

When I was driving around looking for a location, I had one thought in mind. I wanted to find a way to frame myself in midair against the sky (so I could easily mask out the image). I ended up finding a scenic vista lookout point on the top of a local mountain.

This environment checked all my prerequisites.

1. Clear visibility of the sky, unobstructed by trees, buildings ect.
2. Great quantity and quality of soft light.
3. Objects that I could use in order to leap off of.

3. I set up my photo-shoot area

4. Set up the remote trigger and a self-timer.

The reason I needed to use a remote trigger on top of the self-timer is because I found that hitting the shutter button and initiating the 10 second countdown, didn’t give me enough time to climb up onto an object and prepare myself to jump.

So, for a remote trigger I used my smartphone. I was able to synchronize the phone with the camera using the camera’s built in WiFi capabilities and the Canon connect app. However, not all cameras have this feature. So you could alternatively use a remote shutter release or just use a self timer.

5. Shutter button, jump and repeat.

It’s all about the timing. It took these images …

To end up getting this image. Which I’m happy with.