8 TIPS to HELP Improve Your SEASCAPE Photography

[Music] hello friends michael shane bloom here out in san francisco at one of my local beaches and i think i'm gonna shoot some seascape photography of sunset so i thought it would be appropriate to go over some of my favorite tips for shooting seascape images tip number one is to play around with different shutter speeds so don't just stick with one shutter speed for every single shot depending on how fast the water is moving you might want to change it just a few examples a lot of the times when i'm doing my wide angle seascapes and i'm including a lot of foregrounds i like to do 0.5 of a second or one second exposures gives me a nice range of motion while also getting the wave to be a little bit more crisp i do like playing around with super long exposures if i want to create more of a minimalist scene if i want the scene to look a little bit more blissful a little bit more peaceful i'll do like a 30 second or minute long exposure and then of course even on the opposite end doing a super short exposure can really show the power and the textures so let's say you're trying to shoot some really dramatic waves some gigantic enormous waves you might consider doing a really short exposure because if you do those long exposures you're just going to be blurring out all that texture that makes it look so dramatic so think about what you're shooting think about what the actual subject is are you trying to show how dramatic the waves are are you trying to show the flow of the waves or are you just trying to show the simplicity and bliss of the ocean there's no right or wrong answer it just comes down to what you want to say with your photography tip number two if you are shooting with a wide-angle lens and you're close to the ocean let's say you're on the shoreline try getting in the water now i don't mean go for a swim i mean you can go for a swim i don't recommend it but just step into the water you can just dip your feet into the water or go ankle deep or sometimes if i'm really comfortable and i know the waves i'll go in waist deep be very careful doing this but the reason i say this is if you're shooting with a wide angle lens you want that water flow to be coming from the edges of the scene into the photograph you want to lead the viewer through the photograph using the wave motion and what i love about this technique is each individual wave can create a different pattern a different look so you just keep clicking images and then you can pick the right one for the scene get into the water point that wide angle lens down to really see that flow just wanna make sure that the wave isn't leading the viewer out of the scene so like a diagonal wave that ends up leading the viewer to the edge of the scene or off on the other side you want to make sure that that foreground is balanced and working with the background now if you don't have a c-stack to work with or you don't have a bridge or some object to work with oftentimes you can just use the sun or just cloud patterns maybe the clouds are leading you into the horizon that meets where the ocean is flowing so there's a lot of different ways of doing this you just have to play around and experiment with the scene so while wide-angle photography's super fun with seascapes getting those nice dramatic photos at sunset or sunrise you don't have to solely rely on the wide-angle lens for great seascape and coastal photography play around with the telephoto lens i say this every single tricks and tips video i'm always like for every single different style of photography i'm like and don't forget the telephoto lens but it is true um you can shoot some great seascapes with a telephoto lens focus on the rock textures the little waterfalls that are pouring off the cliffs there's a lot of great opportunities for a telephoto lens so don't forget about the telephoto lens it's not all about the wide angle shots alright so here's a more technical tip and this is to use filters so i use a lot of the times i'll use a six stop filter and a 10 stop filter i find that during the day the 10 stop filter works great for getting a long enough exposure to get my one second or .5 of a second or even do 30 second exposures if i want to and i do shoot some of my seascapes during the day i don't just rely on sunset and sunrise light although oftentimes that is the best light to shoot seascapes with you can still get some great stuff during the day um so i use that 10 stop filter and then the six stop is perfect for sunset so if you need to knock down that shutter speed just enough when that sun is right on the horizon the six stop is gonna work great i don't generally use graduated nd filters i just find that a lot of my seascape photography has objects sticking off of the horizon and if you have an object sticking above the horizon and you use a graduated nd filter that object is going to turn out to be a silhouette so i don't want that i end up just doing multiple exposures instead another tip that i found helpful over the years is not to rely on a lens cloth to get the water droplets off of your lens i found that more often than not the more wet the lens gets the more a lens cloth just ends up smudging the lens rather than cleaning the droplets off for droplets i recommend alcohol wipes i use zeiss wipes and also one of my favorite things is this little rocket blower so this rocket blower is great at getting off the water droplets you just go from the middle of the lens outwards and you can get all the droplets off of your lens and it doesn't end up smudging another important gear tip is to always clean your gear after shooting seascapes the salt water if even if there's just little droplets that get on your camera you can end up getting salt corrosion you want to make sure to use a rag when you get home put some fresh water on it wipe down the surfaces of the camera the lens and then also give your tripod a nice shower and i actually recommend doing this even if your camera doesn't get sprayed with water sometimes when you have those strong sea mists or sea haze you can actually get the salt onto the camera without even having a splash on the camera so i just recommend doing it after every shoot on the coast just make sure to wipe everything down takes like i don't know five minutes max so another tip for you and this is more of a compositional tip is to make sure you have clean edges of your photograph let's say you have a super bright image and you have a dark spot on the edge of the photograph or vice versa you have a very dark image and then there's a bright object near the edge of the frame it can create visual tension and make the viewer feel a little uneasy when they're looking at the photograph i guess if that's intentional you can leave it in but make sure the viewer's eye is being led into the photograph rather than out of the photograph and the worst way of making a viewer's eye go to the edge of a photograph is just having a bright spot on a dark background or vice versa all right one of my biggest tips is to just slow down seascape photography can be really difficult it can be hard to find the water patterns that you're looking for it can be hard to find the right composition and just scout around take the time slow down look for different rocks really analyze the scene and you'll find some interesting stuff but sometimes it can take time and sometimes it can be really frustrating and there's been plenty of times where i haven't found a shot while out trying to shoot seascapes but the more time i've had to scout the more time i've had to relax and enjoy the scene more often than not i come away with a photograph that i'm happy with looks like the light is actually getting pretty good so i'm gonna head out there and shoot some seascape photography i really appreciate you guys watching this video if you haven't already please subscribe to the channel there'll be plenty more videos like this one in the future uh give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it helps me out a lot and yeah i'll catch you in the next [Music] video you

Channel: Michael Shainblum

Views: 29,363

Rating: 4.9897795 out of 5

Keywords: landscape photography, seascapes

Id: niJ3BJAUGbQ

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020