Having a wedding on a beach is a novelty chosen by many couples wanting a romantic wedding setting in the outdoors. There is something magical about the feeling of sand between your toes and salty sea spray on your skin. Taking your wedding photographs on the beach has the potential to be wedding photography at its best.
Choose a seaside color palette for your wedding bouquet. Use the vivid hues of the ocean, the sand, and the sunset for inspiration. Tropical foliage, the romantic coastline, hidden coves and jagged cliff faces will provide the perfect backdrop for your wedding shoot.
Explore the area before the day of the wedding. Be on the lookout for unusual natural elements – tidal pools, dunes, boulders, rugged rocks, tree skeletons, and pieces of drift wood – to use as props in your wedding photography. Bold manmade structures, such as a lighthouse, ruin or jetty, can also add a striking edge to your shots. Give the sea birds their five seconds of fame if you can. Play with reflections. Try to catch spontaneous moments like an ocean splash and the billowing effect of the wind – if it decides to show up.
Be adventurous with perspective and take photographs from different angles. Take close-up shots using a shorter lens and capture one element, such as the bouquet or sandy feet, with you and the groom out of focus. Then there’s the close-up shot where the background is blurred and the bride and groom’s faces or bodies are in full focus. Remember that not all your photographs need to be taken on the sand. Search for higher ground and explore aerial shots, or out of focus shots. Try peering through the foliage as a couple. More abstract shots could include handprints or footprints in the sand. How about shooting the reflection of the couple in a pair of sunglasses, or the bride through the wedding ring. It’s all about playing with perspective. Panoramic shots are great too. Be experimental with your wedding photography.
The best time for taking photographs on the beach is early in the morning or in the evening. Keep this in mind for your wedding photography. On a clear beach day, the sun is very harsh, until it has almost set. Good, soft light is at the time of sunset and just after. Use the white ambient light cast by the setting sun. Silhouette shots are also fun, or attempt the perfect dusk shot. Overcast skies act as the perfect natural filter.
Here are some different poses that you can try for your wedding photography:
- Photograph symbols of your love that you’ve drawn in the sand.
- “Let’s dive in together”: If you have a change of clothes and you don’t mind wrecking your wedding attire, take the plunge.
- Have some fun photographs with your bridesmaids and groomsmen too.
- Classic Romantic shots tend to play on the emotions.
- The carefree shot should look like a gentle dance, between the bride and groom, on the beach.
- The movie shot on the water’s edge is where he picks you up and you spread your arms out, as free as a bird, in the embrace of your lover’s arms.
- Make sure that you stare into each other’s eyes in the walk-on-the-beach shot.
- The horizon shot: hand-in-hand on the edge of the sand, facing your new future together.
- Let him carry you into the breakers
- The bedrock shot symbolizes your new life together. Find a rock or boulder to sit on and let him embrace you
as the water laps at your feet. There should be a romantic ruggedness in this shot and the groom should remove his jacket and roll up his sleeves. - Two peas in a pod: This shot captures you as a couple snuggled together in a hammock, or on a beach chair, whispering sweet nothings into one another’s ears.
- Magical and Whimsical shots: These are ethereal shots of the bride and groom between the light beach grass, with the silver shoreline in the background.
- The dramatic coastline shot should encompass the wildness of the crashing waves and the sharp cliff edges.
There are so many different ideas for your beach-wedding photography. Be creative and have fun. Candid shots are often the best.
