Dance Photos On The Beach - Tips & Blog Challenge

July's Blog Challenge was to dance "outside and share a picture of it".  Here is my contribution to this month's challenge!  





Hubby and I went to Maine for a few days and one of the days we got up before the sun to go down to the beach and take photos of the sunrise (and dancing!).

The beach at 4:55am.  ::yawn::

If you've never seen the sunrise at the beach, I so highly recommend it!  This was our first time and neither of us are "morning people", but it was still so worth it.  (And we went back to our hotel and took a nap after, so it didn't cut into our sleep.. haha).

Flying with the seagull.  

More photos and tips for taking beach sunrise (or sunset) photos after the jump!

My husband and I are definitely amateur photographers, but here are our suggestions for getting a good beach photo:

1) Get there early.  

This way you can scope out the area you want to take pictures in and take a few test shots.  Plus the sky looked really cool before the sun was even up!  You can look up sunrise and sunset times at this website.

About 20 minutes before the sun was scheduled to rise.

2)  Take LOTS of photos and test shots.
If you're by yourself, make sure you've used the self-timer before and have something to set the camera on (or a tripod!) so it doesn't get all sandy and you can get the angle right.  If you use a self-timer, see if you can set it to take many shots at once, especially for jumping shots.

If you have a photographer, have them countdown for you for jumping shots.  My husband used sport-mode and burst-mode on our camera to capture the best shots.  (If you're curious, we have a Canon EOS Rebel T1i Digital SLR Camera that I bought back in 2010 for taking photos of our dance recitals).

3)  Watch out for lighting and backgrounds.
Check out the two photos below - not much difference, but in the top photo the upper body silhouette blends into the darker beach strip.  To fix this, the photographer needs to move to get a different angle.  Try shooting from kneeling or from a different side.

I moved closer to avoid blending into the beach.

4) Warm-up!  This may seem like a no-brainer for dancers, but when you're waking up at 4:00am to run down to the beach, you may have forgotten to stretch your muscles and warm-up you body.  The beach we were on was chilly, I actually have a fleece jacket on over my shorts in these photos because it was cold. I wish I had packed a long-sleeve T-shirt or leotard, I'll have to remember that for next time.

A leotard or tighter-fitting clothes would give a cleaner silhouette.

Maybe I'll bring a unitard next time and really confuse the other early morning beach-goers.

5) Thank your photographer and enjoy the rest of the sunrise (or sunset). 

Thanks for reading!  Don't forget to post a link to your July Challenge Blog post or pictures!