I was at the beach for vacation and not really to go shooting, but I made time one morning for a sunrise shoot down where the dunes meet the beach. This was the only morning of my trip in which the eastern sky wasn’t stormy in the morning, so this was my best shot. I had scouted around a little on the night before and decided on some wildflowers on the dunes that I could position in front of the eastern sky. Below is the scene about 20 minutes before the sunrise, with moon in the sky. You can see that I didn’t really have many clouds to work with.
My first compositional idea was down low and close to the sand to highlight the wind-blown ripples in the sand. I thought this texture would make a really interesting foreground. Luckily for me, there was nobody else on the beach and there were no footprints in the sand aside from my footprints along the edge of the dune in the background. Upon getting home and editing my photos, I found the foreground to be kind of lacking. Sure there is a pattern in the sand, but other than that there is just the sun rising in the distance. What do you think?
My next compositional ideas were about capturing some of the dune flowers in the foreground. I was shooting with a very wide angle lens, so I got up close to the flowers to really emphasize them in the photo. I was quite lucky on this Monday morning that I had the beach to myself so I didn’t have worry about shooting around people or removing them in Photoshop, though I did remove a trashcan.
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I was really enjoying these compositions and explored the dunes for a while trying to find other shots. The flowers, I believe, are called beach morning glories and they are quite common on the dunes, mainly blooming in the morning light. When the sun rose enough to begin lighting up the flowers, the scene really began to come alive.
I think my favorite was this vertical shot once the sun had risen enough to light up the flowers. And I find the shot below to be the most well balanced of the morning so I think it views well. I tried my best not to get too heavy-handed with the warmth and saturation when editing the photo. The below photo is actually linked to Flickr, so I hope it displays well.
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One problem I had in exporting these photos was that with so much sky, I really can’t easily make smaller files as they tend to have banding in the sky. This may just be an issue with exporting from Lightroom as I have seen this before. I try to keep my image size below 2 MB on WordPress to save space, but I have to bump it up for these photos. I hope it was worth it.
You can find me on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonfrels/. Thanks for reading.
Jason Frels 
They all look great, in my view, including the ripple pattern. My favorite is the last one, with the bird. I like the reflection of the bird in the watery sand.
Good idea on saving space on WP. I should try that myself, as I tend to upload some pretty large image files.
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Iāve found that it is a bit of a hassle. But, Flickr doesnāt care how large your image is.
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I liked the little birds as well but I wasnāt sure if they made an interesting photo, so I sort of put in in as a background ambiance photo at the end rather than a focal point
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It came off well, at least to me.
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I like the one of the single flower the best. I think it’s the lighting that makes me happy.
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It seems like a hopeful picture to me. I had trouble deciding between that and the vertical picture. Thanks for the nice words.
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Hi Jason!
The second to the last shot of the beach morning glory’s is spectacular!!! I didn’t even know they existed. Not being anywhere near a beach you know, lol. I will say it was definitely worth it!
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I do have to get to the beach from time to time. You might actually be closer to the west coast beaches than the gulf coast.
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Ahh! Beautiful photos. The one with the one flower is my favorite. Stunning, against the sunrise. The little sand pipers always make me smile. Enjoy watching them run so fast on their little legs.
We had some storm clouds, but it only rained one night. So happy that it was sunshine the whole time. The waves were rough and high. You didn’t want to go in far, but they were cool to watch.
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I was wondering how the wave action was at your beach with the hurricanes in the Atlantic. We had very calm waves.
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On the first day there the waves were calm, but then they got rough. Lifeguards are not usually around when we go to the beach late like this, but they were driving their 4-wheelers up and down the beach throughout the day, warming people not to go out far due to riptides. I usually only wade in the water, so didn’t mind not being able to go out far. The undertow was strong and almost knocked me down, just being out a little. The water was sooo warm!
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