The beach offers an exciting range of photographic opportunities, but it can also be a challenging location for photography in terms of light and the vastness of open space. In this tutorial, you'll discover tips to help you take stunning beach photos with your iPhone.
1. Add a focal point
How many times have you taken your iPhone to the beach, taken hundreds of photos of the beautiful scenery, and been disappointed that all your photos look more or less the same? The problem with beaches is that they contain a lot of empty space with few outstanding features.
One of the first rules of photography is that you must always have a focal point in your photo. You need an interesting focus that gives the viewer a place to rest, and then you can build your composition around that focus. You might find this quite challenging at first, but over time you can train your eye to see interesting subjects. Scan the scene for anything that stands out: this could be a person, a boat, a pier, a rock, a sandcastle, a lifeguard tower, footprints in the sand, anything that adds meaning to your photo .
While the photo below has some interesting sand patterns in the foreground, it lacks a clear focal point. It doesn't tell a story or hold the viewer's interest for long.
Involving people in beach photography is a great way to create emphasis.
Without the woman in the image above, this beach scene would be pretty boring: just sand, sea and sky. Including a person adds meaning to the image and creates a strong focus. The woman is the main subject (what you are photographing) and the beach scene around her complements the image.
Focal points don't have to dominate a scene, but they should add meaning to the photo. The man pictured below provides a strong focal point despite being relatively small in the image. Including a large number offree spaceand taking the shot from afar to keep the little man in the composition helps to give a sense of scale.
When deciding where to place your main subjects within the frame, think carefully about the "rules" of composition. What would be the best place to position the topic? It's often better to stay with themrule of thirdswhich states that you should place your main subject off-center. However, place the subject in square photoscentralcan have a powerful effect.
Experiment until you find the best composition for that particular scene.
2. Engage interest at the forefront
A great way to add interest to your beach photos is to bring objects to the foreground.
Climbing the dunes and putting this flower in the foreground added interest and focus to the photo. Foreground objects draw the viewer in and add dynamism to the composition. They also add context to the image and give the viewer a glimpse of the surroundings. When trying to include objects in the foreground, it's often a good technique to crouch down and take the photo from a lower angle.
The sheep in this photo add interest to the foreground and help draw attention to the image. Without the sheep, the image would look quite flat and could only focus on the distant landscape.
3. Use o modo burst
The beach is full of objects that move in unpredictable ways, such as: B. waves crashing, people, birds and boats. This is where burst mode is invaluable in helping you capture just the right moment. To activate continuous mode, just hold down the shutter button for at least half a second and the iPhone will start taking pictures one after another.
Capturing the splash of crashing waves is really exciting, but without burst mode, you could spend hours pulling the trigger on the fly. Burst mode lets you capture the perfect moment in just a few seconds. Give it a try the next time you hit the beach and I'm sure you'll get amazing results!
Burst mode is also great for photographing people and other moving objects like birds or dogs.
4. Look for reflections
aguaproduces some of the bestreflections, and there is one thing that is not lacking on the beach: water!
Once you notice a good reflection, explore your composition options. For example, you can see yourself better if you take the photo from a lower angle. In this photo, I held my iPhone just a few inches above the water, allowing me to foreground the interesting white foam and position the leaping man against the expansive sky.
Harbors and ships can create stunning reflections, especially at sunset. Ripples in the water here have distorted reflections to create an intriguing zigzag effect.
5. Create silhouettes
The beach is a great place to take stunning photos.silhouette, especially at sunset. How are youphotographing the sunsetwith silhouettes?
Silhouettes are created when there is a strong light source behind the subject. Position the subject with the sun behind it and make sure to expose the image in the brightest part of the scene. To set the exposure, simply tap the screen where you want to set the exposure. So in this photo you would be touching the sky as it is the brightest part of the scene. Shooting from a low angle ensures that your subject stands out against the sky and not the sea or sand.
6. Find interesting details
One of the problems with beach photography is that all your photos can end up looking the same: just sand, sea and sky. But if you look closely, there are a lot of interesting details to photograph. I spend most of my time on the beach looking at the bottom!
Look for footprints in the sand, interesting shells or pebbles, seaweed, driftwood, fishing nets or ropes. There is so much texture and intricate detail to photograph on the beach when you start looking. Try to fill the entire frame with these little details to really add impact to the image.
7. Find the color
One of the reasons beach photos can look so similar is the lack of color variation. They have Brownsand, Bluesea and Sky and not much else. To make your beach photos stand out, try to choose vibrant colors; I'm sure you'll find many if you search.
The bright yellow of this boardwalk bench caught my eye and added a much-needed pop of color to my beach photo collection.
Check out the vibrant colors of the fishing nets, buckets and spades, beach balls, lifebuoys, beach huts and boats. Try to fill the entire frame with your subject so that the color itself becomes the focal point of the image.
8. Use lines in your composition
To uselinesin your composition is one of the most powerful ways to create amazing photos with your iPhone. Lines can be straight, curved, S-shaped, converging, parallel or diagonal and ideally lead to your main subject or focal point. Lines can also be the main theme of your image, for example, you can fill the frame with the wavy lines in the sand to create an interesting abstract image that contains only lines.
The waterfront provides an excellent line to use in your composition. Lines generally work best when they start at one of the bottom corners and lead to the focal point. In this example, the curve of the line leads the eye from the lower left corner, around the image, to the beach and cliffs and finally to the white house that is the focal point of the image.
9. Convert to black and white
It's definitely worth trying to convert your images to black and white using a post-processing application likeSnapseedocamera +. You can really change the mood of the photo and create spectacular results. It's also a great way to bring life to images captured on a dull overcast day where the sky has little color or detail.
Black and white works very well in high contrast scenes where there are very bright and very dark areas. It also worked well for this photo, as the foam in the foreground was an ugly yellow that distracted from the rest of the photo.
10. Turn around
My final tip is one that I think is very important in landscape photography, and that is to turn around to see what's behind you. We are often so focused on the beautiful scene in front of us that we forget to look behind us and you might miss out on some amazing shots.
So after taking your beach photos, try going back down to earth to see what interesting themes emerge. Of course, you may need to explore, so take the time to wander around. Climb the sand dunes, walk along the harbor wall or venture into the arcades. I guarantee you'll find some photo treasures!
