Simple Photography Tips - beach photography, and improve your mental health!
- Michael Blyth
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
Seven simple photography tips on what to do when you're bored with lying on the beach - Camera and Phone Camera
Walk slowly, or even crawl
check the depth of field and shutter-speed if you're using a camera
If there's something in the way, try a different angle, or incorporate into the picture
Try to avoid stuff half in and half out. of the picture
Try to avoid post-adjustment
Relax, and have fun
Take your shoes and socks off!
Some folk consider themselves blessed to live by the sea, for others it is a place of work, and sometimes doubt the blessing. Others still, have the pleasure of visiting for a short break, or a holiday.
I did an article some weeks ago involving beach photography, but focused on one shell, with different aspects of photographing it, and it was still winter in the UK.
This time let's go for a walk on the beach near me, and see what's there. Laying opportunities for landscape photography aside, let's do some simple photography tips for what you see on the beach.
In this case an early sunny summers' morning, and a shuffle along the beach. Why a shuffle? It's the best way to notice things, especially small things. Crouch down if you can, and you'll see a whole bunch more.
Even better, crawl if it's sandy, unless nobody has done a beach cleanup. If they have, beach therapy with your camera is the way to go.
The whole business of looking until you see is really highlighted when looking at a beach, there are truly so many things that grab your attention, that it's really easy to miss the small stuff.
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Images One and Two, are an example of seeing shells on the beach which because of the way they've been eroded are such that you'd not take them home as a souvenir, but they form great art.
The difference between the two, is something worth taking a decision about - the first is tighter on the periwinkle - the thing that's got worn badly - and the cockle - the ribby - thing, but the pebble and limpet are part chopped out of the frame, which is a sort of negative.
Image two, less focused on the periwinkle but without any chopped off parts. In both, the fine sand adds a great background texture and grittiness to the image.
The cockle, being buried, somehow adds a sense of permanance to the image, and it's ribbing a huge textural difference.
Since there is no real orientation, i might be tempted to rotate the camera slightly to spread the main objects up and down rather than across the image. But as in so much that fringes on 'art', it's a matter of personal preference.
You'll possibly have noticed a faint shadow, morning and hazy sunlight - great source of natural light.
Image Three. Wandering further down the beach I noticed a number of these yellow beauties. One side aspect of my simple-photography-tips articles is that as you get more involved, you may find a particular interest comes to the fore as you learn to 'look and see'.
I've seen these beasties before, but it was only in putting metaphorical ink to paper that I bothered to go for an identification. You may find yourself developing a great interest in the various types of sea-beastie as you carry on taking photographs.
These shells are pretty small, and it pushed my iphone 14 to it's limits to get a reasonable quality image. My daughter, who has an iphone 16 pro with bells and smells, gets a much better image. I mean, this chap is less than a centimetre long, and the tiddlies are plain tiny..
If you're using a camera with macro lens, then quality is much better.
Again it's the good old 'look and see', it wasn't until I focused on the yellow monster that I saw the little conical chappess next to it, and the even smaller one, somewhat out of focus towards the bottom left.
As i said earlier, the lack of orientation gives all sorts of options in what angle you take the image at, and I tried a number - i"m sharing this one beacuse to me it sit's the most comfortably visually.
Image Four shows another compositional option, making use of holding the iphone-camera upside down so that the lens is closer to the ground. A real benefit of iphone photography - although the same with other makes. So much better than lying on your belly!
If, as on this occasion, your seashell is set slightly in the sand, but with water on the surface, it's a great opportunity to play with the light that's available. In this case I used the light from where the sun had set, and the towering clouds as a backdrop.
One of my photography tricks, which I've used many times since learning it about twenty years or more ago, especially in my portriat photography, is to tilt the background. It can trick the eye into not noticing it as much, and retain focus on the shell.
The reflections, and the way the sky lights up the fragments of black (actually a low grade coal from the Kimmeridge area) gives extra texture.
Image Five is one that caught my eye as I strolled the beach, the thing that first noticed was the white seaweed (or algae?) , and then the texture of the shells.
I composed the image so that the white fronds sat more or less horizontally across the lower third, and the wonderfully lit ribbing on the shell, almost central.
There are truly so very many things that your eyes will notice as you spend more time just looking at the beach, and one of the added joys is that if you print them, you will often end up noticing even more things, as time goes by.
Wading in shallow water with your camera is another fun thing to do, ripples and sand, pebbles and even bugs and beasties, especially if you're somewhere where the water is warm - but that's for another article.
Image Six, is one of those fascinating wierdo's that you come across every now and again. On a trip to the Balearic Islands in the spring, many of the beaches had huge accumulations of these.
What you see in the picture is a sort of 'skeleton' that remains once the bright blue flesh has rotted off - with accompanying stink.
Whilst it definitely affects the lying on the beach with a glass of cava, it is quite fascinating, and if you're interested: monospecific genus of hydrozoa in the family Porpitidae, with distinctive sail that allows it to drift with the wind.
Photographically, it's a pretty good size for phone-photography, and really rather artistic. En-masse, quite overwhelming to photograph.
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