5 Simple Tips to Improve Your Sea and Coast Photography

Sea and coast photography, also known as seascape photography, is one of the harder disciplines to master within nature and landscape photography. Many things can go wrong, and it can cost you your camera if you misjudge a wave.

In my latest video, I share five tips to get your seascape photography up and running. Back in the autumn, I spent 11 days in Lofoten, where I photographed several different sea and coast locations. Lofoten is particularly known for many of these types of locations, as it is a collection of islands off the northern Norwegian coast. In the video, I visit two of the lesser-known coasts, one in the settlement of Vikten and one just outside another small settlement called Vareid.

The first tip I share in the video is to find different kinds of shapes in the rocks or sand you can use to lead the viewer's eye into the frame and up to a potential focal point. As I really like to photograph mountains, I often use one of those. As you can see in the video, I found many different, interesting, and unique foregrounds at both locations that worked very well as leading elements in the scene.

If you want to use waves in your foreground, I share a tip about using continuous shooting mode whenever a wave rolls through your scene. In the video, I give such an example where you can see eight different photos I caught just when a wave rolled by. You can do this several times with several waves until you are satisfied. Afterwards, it is just about choosing the best and edit that one.

Check out the video above, and let me know if you have any more tips for photographing seascapes.

Mads Peter Iversen's picture

Danish Fine Art Landscape Photographer and YouTuber. He is taking photos all over the world but the main focus is the cold, rough, northern part of Europe. His style is somewhere in between dramatic and colorful fantasy and Scandinavian minimalism. Be sure to check out his YouTube channel for epic landscape photography videos from around the world.

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2 Comments

Awesome video’! What is your focal length in these images?

Top notch tips Mads!