How to Make Food Float!

Have you ever seen one of those pictures where someone appears to be floating or levitating right off the ground? Maybe you think they just jumped and took a bunch of photos at the right time to get the shot. Or maybe you realize their hair would be flying all over if that were the case. How about food? If you've ever seen floating food in an ad or on social media, maybe they just dropped the food or took multiple photos as it fell and got lucky. You might think it's smoke and mirrors but in reality, it's just wires and Photoshop! Making food float is a fun little afternoon project and you don't need a lot of things to make it happen. Let me show you how to make food float!

For this project you will need:

-hamburger & fixings

-thin wire & wire cutters

-Photoshop or similar program

-ladderback chairs & a wooden shelf (or other setup you create)

-camera & tripod

This is a very basic version of this project. You can always add more ingredients (ketchup, cheese, bacon), use upgraded ingredients (a fancy bun perhaps?), try a different background, add lights to highlight the ingredients, etc. I wanted to make this a "try it out, work with what you have on hand" type of project so it's more accessible to everyone. You can always upgrade! Look around your house, add in what you'd like to add and make it your own.

I happen to have two ladderback chairs and I thought they'd work perfectly for this project. In order to get the food to float, we are going to use wires stretched across a backdrop. The rungs on the back of the chairs will work great to string the wires across, but you could use tripods, lamps, whatever you have handy that you can tie some wire around. I put the two chairs back to back then looked for something to put the plate on. I went for a shelf that I use for a lot of my photography and wedged it between the chairs to form a base. To keep the background neutral, I pulled out a large piece of paneling and put it behind the setup, this was propped up with another chair behind it.

Now that the "photo booth" section was set up, I went on to create the framework for the burger and fixings to be suspended by. I have a burger bun, lettuce, tomato and hamburger patty, or five layers total to support. I decided to balance the layers on the wire instead of piercing the layer with the wire, so each layer will need at least 2 wires to support the ingredients, one in the front and one in the back. I measured the distance between the two chairs and cut 10 pieces of wire long enough to span the chairs and be wrapped around the rungs of the chair backs. I kept the wires somewhat close together but they can be slid closer or further away as needed to balance the ingredients on top. I picked this wire up at a local craft store, the thinner the wire the easier it will be to remove it in Photoshop later on.

Once all the wires were installed, I gently placed each ingredient on a set of wires starting with the bottom bun. Be gentle and adjust the wire spacing to accommodate the particular layer you are placing so the ingredients don't fall. A splatted tomato can make a real mess!

I took two photos of this set up, one the photos had layers that were pretty straight on and that worked well for certain layers. I decided to make a few adjustments and took a second photo where the layers were tipped slightly towards the camera. Tipping the layers made it easier to see some of the ingredients and made for a more interesting photo. To tip a layer, I made the front wires a little longer than the back layer of wire.

Once I took the photos, I uploaded them from my camera to my computer and brought them into Photoshop. You can see the difference between the two photos, one with the layers more flat and one with the layers a little more tipped. It is also pretty obvious that I didn't nail the exposure in my camera. The lighting in the room changed between setting up the camera and building the framework. I should have taken time to double check it before shooting the photos, but that's ok, we can fix it in Photoshop!

These steps might differ depending on your photos, the program you use to edit your photos and your personal preference but for my photos, I started by fixing the exposure issues. In Photoshop, I went to Filters> Camera Raw Filter. From this menu, you can adjust and edit the exposure, change the blacks and highlights, adjust the saturation and more. Slide around the sliders until your photo(s) look like you think they look best! In my case I warmed the temperature of the photo up a little (to help remove some of the blue undertone), decreased the tint a little, and adjusted the settings by sliding each slider up and down until it looked right.

Once I was happy with the way the image looked, it was time to remove the wires and make the burger float! There is a magic button in Photoshop that remove almost anything fairly easily. The button is called the Healing Brush Tool, sometimes referred to as the bandaid tool. This tool samples other areas of the image to replace the area you want to removed from your photo. This is a great tool to remove acne, stray hairs, or in this case, wires!

To use the Healing Brush Tool, select it from the tool menu on the left. Click in an area where the photo is similar to what you want the replaced area to look like. In the case of this project, I want the wires to look like whatever is behind the wire. On a Mac, hold the Option button then click right above the wire. You'll see a round selection indicator pop up when you hold the option button down, a click of the mouse will tell the software where to start sampling from. Click and drag the mouse along the wire and you'll see the round selector turn into a cross hair that will show you where the software is pulling the sample from. Make sure to keep the selection cross hairs within the same general area of the part you are replacing. If you go over into a different type of background, the software will not do as good at replacing the area. So in other words, you'd want to make a new selection when you get the burger bun vs. the white background.

Work through the wires and replacement sections a little at a time, just in case you need to undo the action and try again. If the software makes it obvious you replaced the area in the photo, go to Edit>Undo, or use command Z to undo the action and try again.

To save the file from Photoshop, go to File > Export > Quick export as PNG. This will save the file and you can then share it on social media or do whatever you like with it!

So what purpose does a floating hamburger serve? Other than being a fun project to do, it is also a great way to show what is included in a sandwich on a menu. It's a different presentation of the ingredients and that makes it more interesting than uploading a regular photo of a hamburger that anyone can take. It's also a great way to tip your toes in the food styling for a restaurant, blog or even a recipe book.

Photoshop's Spot Healing Brush is a great tool and makes it fairly easy to do these types of projects. With some practice, you can work your way up to removing larger objects from your photos which can come in very handy if you are new to photo editing or just want to take out distracting things from your photos. I hope you enjoyed this project, I certainly had some fun putting it together!