Floating product

A product with nothing under it reads as weightless and new. Nothing in the frame explains how it stays there, so the eye stays on the object rather than on the table.

It also frees the edge. On a table the base of a product merges into the ground, but in the air every edge has background behind it, so the whole outline is yours to light.

Rig it and take the rig out. A studio suspends the product on nylon line or an acrylic rod, shoots a frame with the rig and a clean plate of the empty ground, then paints the support away between the two.

Set the camera level with the product, not below it. Looking up puts the viewer on the floor and makes the product loom, which fights the light feeling the shot is for.

Key from the upper left with one soft source, and run a strip light down the right so a bright line draws the near vertical edge. That edge line is what proves there is air behind the object.

Put the shadow on the ground well below the product and keep it soft and round, with a clear gap between the two. The bigger the gap and the softer the shadow, the higher the product reads.

Use it for launch images, advertisements, packaging and anything where the product has to look weightless.

Leave it alone for a listing photograph. A marketplace wants the product flat and plain, and a floating frame looks like an advertisement in a grid of packshots.

Cinema publishes Levitation, and there it is a subject rising in a scene: a person off the ground, a room of objects lifting, shot as an event inside a story. This entry is a studio job on one object, and the whole craft is hiding the rig and placing the shadow.

An exploded view also lifts parts off the ground, but its parts sit in an order along one axis. A floating product is one whole object with nothing else in the air.

Trainer advertising has used the suspended shoe since the 1980s, because a shoe on the floor reads as worn and a shoe in the air reads as light. Phone makers put the handset in the air for launch frames for the same reason. The method has not changed: nylon line, an acrylic rod or a clamp behind the product, a clean plate of the empty ground, and the support removed afterwards. A rendered product skips the rig, which is why so many floating frames since about 2015 are computer models rather than photographs.

A support appears under the product, usually a small clear stand. Say nothing touches the product and name the stand, the rod and the wire in the ban list.

The shadow is stuck to the base, so the product looks like it is resting. Say the shadow sits on the ground well below the product, soft and round, with a clear gap of air between them.