Finding a composition at the beach

Monday 23 January 2023, 20:02 by Nando Harmsen | 4,554 views | 9 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

I love the beach and the sea. But photographing them can be tricky. It quickly becomes either empty or too busy. What should you include in the frame, and how do you do it? In this article, I take you through the process, because quickly taking a photo usually does not work.

Over the past few years, we have spent New Year's Eve on the Opal Coast. Without the fireworks, it is wonderfully peaceful and relaxing, especially for our faithful four-legged friend. It is also a fantastic opportunity to take photos.

Every day at the beach is wonderful. I love it and regret every time that I do not live closer to the sea. But it is even more enjoyable when I walk across the exposed beach at Wimereux. With the dog, and with the camera in my hand.

How do you photograph a beach like this, with the promenade and hotels in the background? At low tide, the beach is covered with driftwood, stones and shells. There may be footprints and other elements that can make everything look very busy.

The only thing I had with me was my full-frame camera, with a 15-35mm lens. No tripod and no filters. All the photos were therefore taken handheld, with the exposure set for the lighter parts (EttR).

The beach at Wimereux on 1 January 2023, in the morning before the sun came up. Note the distortion caused by pointing the 15mm wide-angle lens upwards. That is obviously not attractive. But the photo is not very interesting anyway.
I could of course look for a completely different location, but it can be challenging to make a good photo here after all. So it is a matter of looking, looking, and also really seeing things. That takes time, so it is not simply a case of picking up the camera and taking a photo.

I saw the piece of driftwood lying there, and it looked like a good leading line. So I chose it as the foreground subject, creating a diagonal that mirrors the diagonal of the hotels along the promenade.

A series of positions from which I photographed the branch. I removed one element, but it still does not make an attractive image. Unfortunately. So no branch in the photo.
Yet I am not happy with the image. Although the branch creates a nice line, there is too much 'clutter' on the beach, making the photo too messy, the perfect word, as you can tell. What if the beach around the branch were completely empty...

But it is not empty. There is too much there, and it is too restless. So I look further and decide to use the pebbles lying further to the right as the subject. I look for a new position and consider the possibilities there. But how do you then show it in the best way, especially since this is not really the calmness I was looking for?

An overview of the stones on the beach, it looks busy, even though I was looking for more calm... That is how it can go, as you can see. How can this be improved?
I pay attention to the shapes created by the stones in the photo. I try not to see depth, but everything as an arrangement of flat areas. There is a line in it, and I see a solitary stone lying on the left. Let me move closer to it. A slightly lower viewpoint, and an arrangement of flat areas that is as pleasing as possible.

By taking a few steps closer and moving to the left, I can place the solitary stone on the left of the frame, and the rest on the right. There is a sort of S-curve towards the furthest point of the promenade. That is nice.
Although the image is attractive, I still want to see if it can be made more interesting. Perhaps that is not possible, but I continue looking anyway. So I try to distribute the stones in the foreground more evenly across the frame.

A new distribution of stones in the foreground. The image becomes very different, but not necessarily better. What stands out to me is the tidal pool in the foreground.
What stands out now is the tidal pool in the bottom left. What if I could include it in the frame in an attractive way? Perhaps I need to take a lower viewpoint. This means I look down at the beach less, and lose the lines towards the end of the promenade, but perhaps that is better.

A low viewpoint compresses the stones into a narrower band in the image. The foreground is now shown more prominently, but there is still no line in it. This can be improved.
The busyness of the stones is reduced because they occupy a smaller area in the image. After all, you are looking across them at a shallow angle.

This does allow me to include the foreground better. It is no longer a photo of the beach with the promenade, but a photo of the stones on the beach, with the promenade behind them. A subtle difference.

The photo I will ultimately choose. It is a nice image of Wimereux beach. Unfortunately, the sky on 1 January 2023 did not become any more beautiful than this.
The photo has a nice composition this way, with a clear view of the tidal pool with stones, without the photo becoming very busy.

Unfortunately, the sky did not become any more beautiful than what you see in the last photo. That is something you cannot control. But I do have a nice detail, the reflection of the hotel in the tidal pool.

Also note the change in colour in the image. All the photos received the same minimal editing. Throughout the series, you can see colour arriving in the day as we move from the blue hour into daylight.

The end result is what I like. Of course, you may prefer a different composition.

This gives you some idea of the steps and the time I use to find a composition. Simply pointing the camera and taking a photo rarely produces a good result.

Unless you do all these steps in your head and can see it in front of you. Then you may immediately see the best location and the best composition.

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