How To Take Cinematic Travel Photos at the Beach

As an outdoor photographer based in Los Angeles, the beach is one of the most common locations I visit when I want to capture travel photos. I have visited the beach at different times of the day throughout the seasons for both travel and lifestyle photography.

If you are visiting a city with beautiful beaches and are struggling to take cinematic travel photos, I hope these tips will help you improve your beach photography.

While these photos were taken with my Sony a7R III mirrorless camera, you don’t need a high-end camera and lens to put these tips into practice.

Check Weather Conditions in Advance

Regardless of whether you plan on taking beach photos at sunrise, the middle of the day, or at sunset - you’ll be much more prepared when you have an idea of what the weather might look like when you arrive at your destination.

It’s important to not rely on weather forecasts, nor let it hinder you from taking photos at all. But checking the weather in advance is something I always do when I travel so I can have an idea on how I might want to plan any kind of photoshoot before arriving.

Knowing the weather conditions can influence how you choose to approach the photoshoot. From my experience, less people visit the beach during sunrise or cold evenings. You can also find vibrant blue hues during an overcast evening when there won’t be a sunset. All of these elements come together to produce a moody beach photo at blue hour.

Utilize Colors in the Beach

If you’re somewhat familiar with the beach that you’ll be visiting, then you can use the colors you know that will be at the location to your advantage.

You can take photos of the blue waves from the ocean that start to spread onto the orange sand, illuminated by the golden light from the sun (complementary colors). If the beach you’re visiting has grass nearby, then you can mix those colors with the orange sky at sunset (analogous colors).

Color harmony is something that I have started paying more attention to in my photography. I’ve noticed some of my favorite beach photos utilize complementary and analogous colors, but my favorite has been keeping monochromatic golden colors at sunset. Understanding color harmony can have a great impact on how/what you take photos of when you’re at the beach.

Of course colors can be manipulated in editing, but if you’re struggling to find ways to make your beach travel photos stand out, you can try photographing certain colors in your environment intentionally.

Crashing Waves at the Beach

You might not be able to apply this tip to every beach location you visit, and you might have to visit at a certain time of day to utilize this trick, but I love trying to photograph the waves from the ocean crashing on objects like rocks.

This trick adds some dramatic movement to a still image and makes the overall travel photo look a lot more cinematic. Depending on the type of photo you want, you should pay attention to your shutter speed. I’m personally not a huge fan of long exposures and I prefer to capture crashing wave beach photos with a high enough shutter speed so that you can see the small water drops in motion.

I’m usually able to capture crashing waves at around sunset or blue hour.

Change Your Composition and Angles

I think this is an important tip for most travel photography images (and photography in general): try to avoid taking photos only at eye-level. You can shoot from a crouched position and with a wide angle, or you can close in on certain details of the beach. If possible, you can try to take a down angle of the beach from an elevated surface, such as in the photo below at El Matador Beach in Malibu.

Utilize Different Subjects in the Location

You can find different subjects at the beach to make the final images look more cinematic. General beach landscape photos can look amazing by itself. But if you’d like your images to be more interactive, adding just a single subject can go a long way and you can apply some of the above mentioned tips. From surfers to birds to lifeguard towers, there can be plenty of subjects to use in your travel photos.

For example, a red lifeguard vehicle paired with blue hour at the beach sets up two contrasting colors that go well together (even though they’re not perfectly complementary). You can also feature a subject walking by the beach at sunset as they are silhouetted by the sunlight.

You also don’t have to take photos of only the sand and ocean to get stunning beach photos. I personally like to capture other parts of the area I’m in like the highway and bluffs on the opposite side of the beach, or nearby buildings.

Find Reflections in the Ocean

If you choose to focus on the sand and ocean at the beach, then you can try to vary your travel photos by taking reflection photos of different subjects in the ocean. For example, you can capture reflections coming from the dramatic clouds in the sky, or the dimming light coming from the while it sets over the horizon, or a reflection of a structure like the Venice Beach Pier.

I like to use wide-angle compositions when I’m working with reflections, but it’s up to you how you want to compose these photos.

Visit The Beach During Off-Hours/Off-Season

This is a bit contradictory to one of my earlier points, but I highly recommend trying to visit the beach at times when there won’t be a lot of people around. I enjoy taking photos of the beach at sunset, but a lot of locals and tourists in Los Angeles will usually stay for the sunset (especially during the summer) as well. Unless you don’t mind removing people in post, then visiting the beach at less busy times might be a huge benefit for you.

I am able to find some locations that are less busy during this time, but I feel I have a lot of more creativity in capturing beach landscapes without distractions when I visit the beach early in the morning, or capture sunsets during the fall or winter, when people are less likely to go to the beach when it’s much colder.

Most of my favorite beach travel photos are actually taken during the end of the year, when sunset comes earlier in the evening and most people aren’t around.

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re going on vacation to a new city with beaches you want to take photos of, or if you’re just looking for travel photography tips, I hope you found this blog helpful.

As someone who started out in street photography, I grew to love going to the beach and taking photos of sunrises and sunsets in new and familiar locations.

Taking the photo is only part of the process when it comes to taking beautiful beach photos, as editing also plays a huge role in the final results of your image. But I hope this post provides a good starting point and helps you think of new ideas.

Thanks for reading and until next time.

Feel free to explore more of my travel photography on my website:

Tokyo, Japan Travel Photography

Los Angeles Travel Photography

Berlin, Germany Travel Photography

London, UK Travel Photography

I also do outdoor lifestyle photography shoots at the beach. Feel free to explore some of these lifestyle photoshoots in Los Angeles beaches:

Outdoor Editorial Lifestyle Venice Beach Photoshoot

Luxury Watch Outdoor Lifestyle Photoshoot at Venice Beach, Los Angeles

Sunrise Outdoor Lifestyle Photoshoot in Santa Monica

Creative Commercial Beach Campaign Photography in Santa Monica