5 Photography Mistakes You Need to Avoid When Shooting Seascapes

A Post By: Jeremy Flint

Here are some practical steps to take and 5 photography mistakes you want to avoid in order to help you capture better seascape images.

Capturing seascapes is a very popular past-time and one of the most enjoyable and fascinating types of landscape photography. People love to capture the ocean and for good reason.

Seas around the world are more accessible than ever to the majority of us. People take regular holidays to visit the abundance of natural beaches and the ocean provides a fantastic place of escape and freedom from bustling towns and cities.

The ocean is a breathtakingly beautiful place and offers peace, tranquility, and an ideal opportunity to capture some memorable images. While the coastline offers photographers spectacular seas and atmospheric skies, recording these scenes can be challenging.

Mistake #1 – Cloudless skies

A common mistake that is often presented in seascape imagery is a vast expanse of empty sky without any texture or formation from clouds to lift the image.

To avoid this pitfall, head to the coast on partially cloudy days. Photographing ocean vistas to include the different patterns and shapes of clouds above the sea will help your images to become more inspiring.

If you find yourself taking pictures by the sea during first and last light, you will discover the colors in the sky can look even more dramatic than at other times of the day. This can beautify your image with vibrant sunset skies igniting the sky.

Alternatively, capturing big white clouds to complement a blue sky or dark, moody and overcast skies can add drama and emotion to your images.

Mistake #2 – Not checking the tide schedule

If you are unprepared during a visit to photograph the ocean by not checking the tide schedule, you may get caught out by incoming tides and even freak waves during adverse weather.

The sea and waves can be unpredictable and powerful. I have ended up with wet shoes countless times while trying to capture the moving waves. Be mindful of the risks the ocean presents to you and the harmful impact the saltwater can have on your camera and equipment.

Always protect your camera (a plastic bag can keep it safe from the salty sea air) and be sure to clean your camera when you return home.

If you would like to capture the swell of the ocean at high tide or an exposed bay of rocks during low tide, be sure to check the tide times and visit at the right hour.

You will find that planning to be at the coast when the tide is at a certain point will help you shoot better compositions and seascape photos.

Mistake #3 – Not considering your composition

Capturing beautiful images of the coast is not as straightforward as you might think, especially if you don’t think about your composition carefully. A few things worth considering are leading lines and the rule of thirds.

Leading lines are a great way to lead the viewer’s eye into the frame toward the main focal point in the photo. They can help to create depth in an image and provide more purpose.

When photographing the sea, you will find that placing the horizon in the middle of the image will generally be less effective than positioning the water level above or below the center of the frame.

You may be asking if should you include more sea or more sky in your composition? Well, that depends on the nature of the scene in front of you and what is the most interesting and important aspect of the story.

If the sky is compelling and vibrant, your image will be stronger by including more sky. But if the sky is uninviting and lacks drama while the ocean is swirling beautifully, compose the image to include more of the sea.

Whatever you decide to shoot, be imaginative and creative with your composition and capture some great images.

Mistake #4 – No focal point

One of the great benefits of being by the coast is the variety of subjects to shoot. However, it is surprising to see the number of times beginner photographers take images of the sea without including a strong focal point in their images.

You could focus your camera on any number of interesting material at the sea such as piers, fishing boats, lighthouses, cliffs, rocks or fish.

Mistake #5 – Not including any foreground interest in the shot

While the sea can make an exciting subject, a mistake newbie photographers tend to make when capturing the ocean is to photograph the sea and sky with nothing in the foreground.

This can occasionally work well in the right light and setting.

But capturing an extra element such as cliff ledges, flowers, shells, or footprints in the sand will add context and another dimension to your image to help it stand out.

Conclusion

The best seascape images rarely happen by chance. Instead, they are the result of careful planning, diligence, and practice. Keep exposing, avoid these photography mistakes and use the tips and with plenty of practice, you will soon be capturing breathtakingly beautiful images!

How about you, what do you enjoy about seascape photography? Please share your tips and images below, as well as any questions you might have.

5 Tips How to Set Up a Home Studio for Dramatic Portraits

A Post By: Lily Sawyer

Having a brick and mortar studio when you are a photographer is such a huge and daunting step. There are so many overhead costs to consider such as rent, electricity, insurance and various other bills. It’s a worry to cover all these before you pay staff and yourself and still make enough profit to make a living. This thought can make one feel that having a studio is an impossible dream or is too of a big a step to take. But you can always start somewhere, so let’s look at some tips for how to setup a home studio.

How to set up a home studio

If you have a spare room in your home or a basement, that is a good place to consider as a home studio. You may be surprised at just how much space is needed to start a portrait studio. Not that much at all! In this article, I will show you how I have set up my little home studio which I have recently revamped to make into a dedicated portrait studio.

I live in London in a narrow Victorian house. These houses have a typical 2-up 2-down rectangular layout, short side across and long side from front to back, with a narrow corridor that runs on one side of the house all the way to the back. My house has two reception rooms (living rooms) and a dining room and kitchen at the back. I decided to make the first reception room (the front room of the house) into my studio. It has a bay window at the front which juts out of the house and provides nice ample natural light.

At first, I set up my backdrop on the opposite side of the window so it was facing the window directly. The reason for this was so that I could get a much wider area for shooting. However, this is not great for dramatic lighting with natural light flooding from the window, with the camera right in between the backdrop and the window. This lends itself to flat lighting instead which isn’t what I wanted for my studio.

In order to achieve a more versatile directional lighting and avoid flat lighting from the window, I use strobes at 45-degree angles to the backdrop to get the lighting setup that I like.

Recently, I have moved things around so that I can use dramatic natural light if I want without the need for strobes, although I still have the flexibility to add strobes and artificial light if needed. This is how I’ve done it.

#1 Make sure your backdrop is at 90-degrees to the window

This angle gives you a lighting that is more dramatic as it is only coming from one side. If you position your subject so that the far side of the face is unlit, you could achieve lighting similar to the Rembrandt style or low-key portraits.

#2 It is ideal to have an L-shaped corner connecting your window light to your backdrop or wall

Having this little dark, unlit corner between your backdrop and the window gives you a 45-degree angle lighting setup which is one of my favorite set-ups. The corner minimizes the light for you to be able to create a moodier image with only the front left of the face illuminated rather than full light flooding from the side.

In terms of artificial light, this is similar to controlling the amount of light hitting your subject either by the use of grids, a strip light or a snoot. You don’t want your subject awash with light as that would make for a rather flat lighting.

My personal preference is for having both light and shadows in my images so I can sculpt my subjects using directional light. If you don’t have such a corner, you can use a V-flat (two black pieces of mountboard taped together to form a V) positioned in the corner as shown in the diagram above.

#3 Paint your wall dark or use a dark backdrop

You will be astonished at the difference a dark backdrop makes! It brings focus to the subject far more than a light backdrop can. It also lends itself to more artistic photos.

#4 Diffuse your window light

Window light, albeit coming from an angle, can still be a bit harsh. You can further soften this light by diffusing it with some white sheer curtains or voile or any fabric that can diffuse the light. The bottom half of my windows are frosted which means they are already perfectly diffused. I cover the top half with pieces of diffusion fabric to cut out the light.

#5 Use a reflector or light opposite the window

Much like in a painted portrait, reflected light is a pleasing detail found at the edge of the unlit side of the face. A silver reflector can achieve this very well with a stronger reflective light result as compared to a white reflector. I find that the gold reflectors can make the skin too warm so I stick with the silver and warm up the overall image in post-production.

The reflector does have to be positioned really close to the subject to make it more effective. If you don’t have an assistant who can hold it in place for you, get a free-standing reflector arm that you clip the reflector into thus making it easy for you to position it as needed.

Using strobes

If you want to use or add artificial light such as strobes or continuous lighting, consider a portable studio kit that you can fold and hide away when not in use. Here you can find suggestions of equipment to use for your portable studio kit.

There are many possibilities and things that you can do with this type of setup. Even with just one flash (like this tutorial), you can create dramatic home studio lighting. Another fun thing you can do with flash is creating double exposures.

These images below were taken in exactly the same spot as those above. But this time a gridded softbox was placed on the right as the main light instead of using the natural light coming from the window on the left.

I hope you found this article helpful. Please share images taken in your home studio, and if you have one or more tips on how to create portraits in a small studio space please share those too.