8 Useful Tips on How to Take Beautiful Family Portraits on the Beach

I know the struggle is real when it comes to taking beautiful family portraits on your own. It can be quite challenging to get good quality family portraits on the beach. Portraits where everyone looks normal, not awkward. I mean no silly faces, no squinty eyes, just smiles and natural expressions. Now let’s add in kids not willing to collaborate, blowing winds, flying sand, glaring summer sun and you’ve got yourself in a tricky situation where taking these family portraits you’ve always dreamed of seems like something unachievable. I’ve been there with my own family so many times. Actually, every single one of my family vacations looks like a deja-vu from the last vacation when it comes to taking family portraits on the beach.

Don’t worry, I am here for you! I have prepared a quick guide on how to succeed with your family portraits on the beach this (or any other) summer:

1. Timing is everything.

The best time for beautiful family photographs on the beach is early morning or at dusk: NOTHING in between. Let’s be clear: if you like taking phone snapshots of your kids playing in the sand at noon, these is nothing wrong with that. However, those are not the type of portraits we are talking about right now. We are talking about you having good quality family portraits in that dreamy location of yours.

Therefore, I recommend shooting early in the morning since the beach would probably be overly crowded at dusk. I personally didn’t want to have people in the background of my family portraits, so that timeframe worked like a charm for me.

Get to know the sunrise time for your location and get to the beach 30 minutes prior. From my experience, once the sun is there, you will only have about 15 minutes to shoot before the lighting gets too harsh. So getting at the beach 30 minutes prior to the sunrise would give you extra time to shoot.

2. Coordinate your outfits tastefully.

In my experience, a mix of whites and neutral colors looks good on beach family portraits. Other wins include coral, navy, and pastel colors, all of which photograph great against the beachy backdrop. For more information on what to wear for a family session, click here.

3. Pick your spot in advance.

I recommend visiting the beach a day prior to the planned photoshoot and around the same timeframe to get to know your location better. Once you are on the beach, pay attention to the following: where the sun is rising, what would be the best spot for a family shooting, what is in the background, what is the direction of the light in your shooting spot?

4. Prepare your kids and spouse (if need be) for a photo shoot.

My best advice here would be bribery. It works like magic every single time. You know your family best, so it would be up to you to decide what to offer them in return for participating in your family photo shoot. My kids are easy compared to my hubby, who is not so eager when it comes to participating in family shootings. He needs to be prepared weeeell in advance (while we are still in Montreal) for the upcoming family session. Not everyone likes being photographed, I get it. But when your wife is a photographer, you kind of have no choice, but to participate LOL.

5. Experiment with your angles during the shoot.

What I like most about early morning shootings is golden hour lighting. You will see for yourself how soft and magical this light is. When it lands on your kids’ faces, they do not squint, it doesn’t produce harsh shadows, it lights evenly and it naturally adds a golden filter to their faces.

Do experiment with different angles when it comes to positioning your kids and spouse. If the sun hasn’t risen yet, I do recommend turning everyone towards the direction of the sunrise. This way they will be lit with golden hour light and frankly, it’s my favorite lightening angle for morning shootings. 

Once the sun appears on the horizon, you may want to turn them away from the sun so that the sun is shining at the back of their heads. This position is trickier if you aren’t familiar with photography basics and shooting using ‘auto’ mode. Your camera would probably overexpose your images making the sun and water look too bright. I suggest you do experiment here by testing your camera and your own photography knowledge.

6. Let the kids play.

If you want lifestyle and candid poses, ask your kids to play or run around, but not to pose. I asked my oldest son to pick some seashells from the ocean. As you see I was able to get a few candid shots of him playing and not just directly looking at the camera. Taking a shot of seashells alone at the end can be a great “accessory” photograph.

7. It’s okay if you only get a handful of decent photographs the first time around.

Photography takes time and practice. I will be honest with you: during our last vacation, we took FOUR trips to the beach for family portraits at 6.30am. Did I mention that my hubby hates shootings? 😊 We didn’t go four times because I didn’t know how my camera works the first three, but because it was either too windy or started to drizzle. Only the two last times were good enough weather wise. 

8. Try to get at least one family portrait.

Having a family portrait in a dreamy location is truly priceless and is probably the main reason why you take your camera vacationing with you in the first place. I really wanted to have at least one  decent family portrait of all of us on the beach. So how do you go about it? One option would be asking someone (a friend/a stranger walking on the beach/another amateur photographer like you) to take a photo of your entire family.

That’s exactly what happened to us. We were lucky to find another photographer on the beach looking to capture a beautiful sunrise when we showed up for our last “photo session”. I quickly figured that it would be the only option to get our family portrait done. And luckily for me, that gentleman was more than happy to take a few shots of all of us.

Another option would be packing your tripod with you. I am not so eager on using this option as traveling with kids already requires luggage space management as it is. It is understandable that the idea of bringing a tripod on vacation in order to take this one photograph doesn’t sound all that appealing. At least not to me! On the other hand, if you are comfortable enough with your camera settings and don’t mind making extra space in your luggage for a tripod, it may totally work!

These are the main steps on how to achieve beautiful family portraits on the beach. I hope they will help you when you photograph your family on the beach this summer!

Should you have any questions or comments regarding any of the points mentioned above, don’t hesitate to write to me.