Beach Wedding Photography

Being blessed with Lake Michigan only 65 miles away beach weddings are a regular occurrence.  The best part of beach weddings isn’t the sand and water, but the beautiful bride and groom getting married on the shores of a great lake, similar to John the Baptist baptizing Jesus at the Sea of Galilee. The guests stroll around and usually get to partake in the celebration. A comfortable setting, sacred event, and comfortable guests make for a great beach wedding event.

Photography on the beach can be a blessing and a curse. Without the proper lighting the beach can be a photographers worse nightmare. The harsh light of the sun creating dark sunken squinty eyes. When you turn the bride and groom away from the sun, the shadows from the sun will darken the faces and create a very boring image. The fix for this problem is lighting. Some photographers use reflectors, or on camera flash where I have had great success with off camera flash. The flash will fill in the shadows created by the sun leaving a high light in the eyes and giving life to the image. Off camera flash is a great tool for beach weddings allowing you to over power the sun darkening down the sky behind the couple.

Posing on the beach is fun. Traditional posing is a little boring for the beach, but can be successfully done using sand dunes along the shore. Artistic posing is the way to go when photographing a outgoing wedding party on the beach. Due to the location, and general relaxed atmosphere on the beach posing should be less formal and more natural. “Go with the Flow”, but also get the photographs that are important to capturing the day. Most importantly have fun and good luck with your next beach wedding.