Beach Day Photo Ideas, Hour by Hour
A beach day is short, bright and almost impossible to photograph well: the light is brutal at noon, the phone is either in a bag or covered in sand, and everyone looks the same in every frame.
Eight prompts is the right length - one per hour from the car park to the drive home. Half of them point at objects rather than people, which is what saves you at 1 p.m. when the sun is directly overhead and nobody is photogenic.
Suggested Sway setup
- Length
- 8 hours ยท 8 photos
- Start it
- At the car, towels still folded.
- Mode
- Everyone sees every photo
Open. It is a short day and half the group will be in the water at any given hour.
The shot list
- 1
The walk down
Loaded with bags, from behind, before anyone has picked a spot.
- 2
The spot, claimed
Towels down, wide enough to show the neighbours.
- 3
First one in
Whoever went first, at the moment of committing.
- 4
From the water
Turn around and shoot the beach from waist deep.
- 5
Lunch, sandy
Whatever is being eaten, sand included. Do not brush it off.
- 6
The nap
Whoever is face down on a towel. Shoot from a low angle.
- 7
Shadows getting long
The light changing. People optional.
- 8
The car, after
Wet towels, sandy floor, everyone quiet.
Three things worth knowing
- Three hours is the shortest a Sway runs, so an eight-hour beach day has plenty of room.
- Shoot into the shade at midday. Squinting groups at noon are the reason beach albums get deleted.
- Give hour four to whoever is happiest keeping their phone dry in the water.
Run this list as a Sway
Set it to 8 hours, invite the people you are with, and everyone gets one photo per hour. When it ends, the whole thing becomes a single split-screen video.