Photo of the Day


View from Above

May 12, 2017

By Stacey Goldberg

Phillip Van Nostrand

It was nearly ten years ago when travel, fashion, editorial and wedding photographer Phillip Van Nostrand first saw an image of fellow photographer Mike Larson’s camera toss—an image created using a technique where the photographer stands in the center of a group of people (a bridal party, for example) and throws their camera up in the air with the lens facing down. “I thought it was so crazy and awesome looking,” Van Nostrand recalls, and he was inspired to try the technique himself.

Fast forward several years and nearly 300 camera tosses, and now Van Nostrand has mastered the technique, so much so that he has dedicated a separate Instagram page entirely to these fun and thrilling shots.

It’s not the safest trick in the books, Van Nostrand warns. It requires a lot of practice and hand-eye coordination. “I like to call this my $3,000 trick, because if I drop my camera, that’s how much I’ll lose.” But the results yielded from a successful camera toss have proven to be a hit at parties and weddings. “People talk about it throughout the wedding, to the point where I have strangers coming up to me asking about the picture where I threw my camera in the air,” he says.

Want to learn more about the camera toss and the settings Van Nostrand uses to pull it off? Check out the May issue of Rangefinder!

© Phillip Van Nostrand

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