Beach photos

witler

Eight Pointer
Not nature but natural, we will be on OBX next week, I received the honor of photographing the family portrait. I have never done this before, any suggestions will be most helpful...back drop, time of day, settings etc...

Group shot will be about 30 people, then countless requests of take me and mine together. You can probably tell by the tone of this, I am really looking forward to this.

Thank you to all suggestions.
 

sky hawk

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
Either find some shade or around 6-7 pm usually works good. Bright sunlight is the killer on the beach, but if you wait too late until the sun actually goes down, you will begin to get some graininess. If you can get an angle where the evening sun is blocked by a house or a large dune, that's better than the orange tones you get from people facing the sun. Shooting back toward some grassy dunes looks good, as long as there isn't direct sun into the camera.

I've taken quite a few large-family beach photos at this point. I don't particularly enjoy it, but somehow I always get the job. On both sides of the family. I even got suckered into shooting a beach wedding one time. I am far from an expert on this, but these are just my opinions from trial and error.

Some of the best family photos we've taken were under the pier. If you have a pier nearby, an evening shot when the sun is still up, but you're in the shade under the pier looks really good. Bring a tripod and set it up looking right down the pilings underneath. Low(er) tide works better. I've had a couple of remotes, but I prefer just to use the 10-second timer and jump in the pic.
 
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41magnum

Twelve Pointer
Probably too late.......but, Whoever received YOU that honor, should invest in a tripod to assure success.

Full shade provides even lighting with no reflecting (overexposure) ......

There are patches of woods I hope you used for the background as well as providing shade,,,,that's what we did last year.

The beach, with them facing West at sunset/early evening works good too....or large dunes as the background at that time can be good too as long as the sunset isn't too orange/clouds/purple.
 
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