Beach Portraits: Color Palettes and Composition Tips

Updated: Jul 17, 2020

In this blog post, I am going to walk through some of my color palettes choices for summer beach style photoshoot. Below are the three weather conditions when shooting on the beach.

• Clear Weather
• Overcast Weather
• Sunset Hours

Clear Weather

When the weather is clear and blue sky is present, I would like to match the background with red outfits. Red warm color creates nice contrast with cold light blue sky. In this shot below, I have to lower the camera angle to position the red outfits against white to stand out more. Make sure the area around the head is clear and no distraction to the viewer.

16mm F1.4 Fujifilm X-T2 | @rayskyy

16mm F1.4 Fujifilm X-T2 | @rayskyy

Overcast Weather

Overcast weather usually has gray tones overall. The white color against the gray background will have a smoother transition of colors. If the background has darker tones, that will even be better for standing out the white dress as seen below.

For the second photo below, I used the white wave line to act as leading lines for the portraits. Meanwhile, the white wave also matches the dress color to create coherence.

RF 85mm F1.2 L Canon EOS R | @rosinashakirova

RF 85mm F1.2 L Canon EOS R | @rosinashakirova

Sunset Hours

The background for sunset hours overall has more golden tones, white or red outfits will still fit in this situation. For white tops, like the photo below, you can add a red bandana to have some red color pop. The light blue in the jeans matches the light blue in the water background as well.

Zeiss 35mm F1.4 A7iii | @kialarenae

Zeiss 35mm F1.4 A7iii | @kialarenae

In summary, light blue, gray, and white color are the main primary background colors for the beach portraits photoshoot. My main choices for outfit colors will be more toward the warm side, such as red, orange or bright yellow. These colors will stand out nicely against the beach backdrops.

Thanks for reading :) More photos will be uploaded in my Instagram account: @caliallstaring.

• Tips