How To Shoot A Beach Wedding

Shooting a beach wedding is nothing like shooting a normal church wedding many photographers think shooting a beach wedding will be easy but in fact it can be much harder then shooting a church wedding in many ways as I will get into.

First a little about me. Me Ed Morgan and my wife have been working on the beach shooting beach weddings and family beach portraits for over ten years, We have shot hundreds of beach weddings and hundreds of family portrait sessions. Over the years I have used owned and tested many different lighting flash setups and just about anything you can think of for shooting in bright sun light. We have shot natural light and with flash and the best is a mix of both as needed.

So for shooting weddings on the beach there is only a hand full of people around the world that have the experience I have shooting beach weddings for this long and this many of them. Many times the amount of beach weddings I would shoot in just in one week is more then most photographers ever shoot in a year or two or ever. So I know a lot about getting great beach wedding photos on good days, bad days, very cloudy days and outright terrible days.

Next after all the walking and fun shots we do more just bride and groom shots now down in the sand sitting and we go back to using the flash we also do some of the bride by her self. At this point the bride or groom most of the time will ask for other photos of them and some close friends we will do and this can turn into some fun shots.

Other shots we may do based on the sun light is a large group shots all walking on the beach all having fun and maybe even jumping we are all about giving our customers what they want so they get the photos they want and will enjoy for years to come.

If it ended up being a nice day and everything went well we part our ways and head for home to start loading in the photos to edit.

So shooting a wedding on the beach can be a lot more work and you can encounter more problems then you may think.

A few things we see shooting on the beach at weddings and family beach portraits that are a dead give away of a un-experienced beach photographer are. Most of the time they are from out of state and got hired to shoot someones beach wedding or portraits.

Bringing out two light stands with large flash heads and larger soft boxs and large battery packs. Nine times out of ten you can sit and watch as they try to set it all up as the wind blows it all down, Blows the large soft boxes apart, Knocks the flash heads down into the sand they then take most all of it back to the can and the try and shoot with just a on camera flash that dose not have the power to work in the bright sunlight.

People holding large reflectors. I have read over and over in so many how to shoot articles that you should use reflectors. But here is what happens on the beach most of the time. First the wind blows the reflector so much you can not hold it in place and second on a bright day the light you reflect is very blinding to the person you are reflecting it on. Just think if F16 or F18 light being shot right at your face you would not like it. So we see photographers try this over and over and then you see them toss the reflectors down on the ground all upset.

Then we see the on camera flash people that have no clue how their flash works. They are their to shoot a beach wedding and start blasting away with flash from 20 feet away and wonder why all the images look so dark. Its because when you use flash the camera assumes the flash is lighting up you subject and it will shut down the amount of light it lets into the camera and with the sun being so bright the camera thinks wow that much bright sun light and now on camera flash to I need to stop way down and the end result is dark images flat dull images and a lot of burned up battery’s.

The other problem is if you read the manual on your flash it can only light up a subject at a distance based on the light that is out so if it is F16 out you flash may only be able to put out F16 of flash power at 3 to 4 feet in front of you so when you are shooting 10 to 20 feet away like for the wedding the flash is just wasted making you get a very bad exposures. You might be hitting your subject with F2.8 of flash but the sun is hitting your subject at F16 so your F2.8 of flash is doing nothing to help but your camera will react to the F16 of light and stop down giving you dark or just crummy looking images.

So if you are going to be shooting a wedding on the beach you should spend more time then you might think and learn how to shoot in bright sunlight and deal with shooting groups of people in the sun and have a good power full flash system.

A few crazy things we have seen on the beach when shooting a wedding on the beach or portrait session.

We had our off camera flash system catch on fire the head burst into flames after a power full blast of light and I had to take it and toss it in the ocean to put it out.

Have seem many brides arive very drunk and fall down walking on the beach or get sick on the way walking on the beach.

Had one bride after the wedding throw her hands up in the air and her new wedding ring flung off her finger and got lost in the sand. We all looked for almost a hour till I guy arrived that had a metal detector and he found it for her.

Have had a few times guests pass out from the heat at a beach. weddings in the summer months can be 104 on the beach in June, July and August.

Have had drunk people on the beach stand behind the wedding as it is going on mooning everyone.

People have bright wedding cakes out on the beach not thinking about the heat and the cakes just melt apart very fast.

Over the years I have shoot with many cameras going back to film cameras and then starting with some of the first 2MP digital cameras.

I shot with a lot of Canon digital cameras for many years till the Nikon D3 come out and I got it and it was such a better camera in every way much better then my $5000 plus canon Mark III I had just got. I sold all my Canon gear and went all Nikon. I then ended up selling the Nikon D3 and buying two Nikon D700 Body’s that became the best cameras I have ever owned they have been total work horses never letting me down. Not one of them has ever had a problem even after over 200.000 shutter clicks, being dropped, rained on, beach sand blasting them over and over for years and so on. As of writing this I still have both of them and they both still work like the day I got them.

Now days i am shooting with the new Nikon D500 as my main camera and the Nikon D7200 as my zoom camera. I have switched from full frame cameras to cropped cameras they are lighter and the lens out now days give me all the same zoom ranges I had with the full frame cameras and the new D500 produces outstanding image quality in a high end professional body.

For flash over the years I have used a lot from low cost Vivitar flash’s to high end Ranger systems to over power the sun that was like carrying a car battery with you everyplace. For many years after it come out I used a Ranger Quadra flash system that was around $1600 it was a very good flash system i used it on hundreds of weddings and family portrait sessions. Now days I am using a much lighter 360 bulb flash system and I use Nikon speed lights and some GoDox speed light flash’s all with wireless flash triggers so everything is wireless.