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.
How to run it
- Length
- 8 hours · 8 photos
- Start it
- At the car, towels still folded.
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 with Sway
Start a Sway for these hours, send the people you are with its link and follow the list hour by hour. Everyone gets one shot per hour, and when it ends the hours come back as a single split-screen video.