Portrait Photography How To

It may not seem like it to those living on the East Coast, but the weather is beginning to warm up, and pretty soon some folks will be swapping overcoats for bikinis. This tutorial will help you get prepared for photographing your favorite bathing beauty, with several helpful tips for shooting beach portraits with natural light.

Julia Trotti is an Australia-based fashion photographer, and in the video below you’ll get a behind-the-scene look as she photographs a pretty model on the seashore and describes her techniques. Trotti includes her exposure settings, and the camera and lenses she used, with all of the photos in the video.

The shoot begins with Trotti’s model wearing jeans, until things warm up and the bathing suit comes out. You'll see how Trotti composes her portraits for an environmental look that retains the beauty of the sea in the background.

Like with all forms of portraiture, posing is important—especially when photographing a young and inexperienced model, and you’ll pick up some valuable tips watching Trotti direct her subject. For some shots she moves in tight for close-ups, and for others she pulls back for full body shots.

As you can see, beautiful beach portraits without flash are easily accomplished with careful posing, proper exposure settings, and a bit of experimentation. And you’ll learn why Trotti says it’s best to not wear jeans to the beach!

You can find more helpful tips on Trotti’s YouTube channel, and in her recent tutorial explaining how to enhance underexposed images in Photoshop.

You should also check out this video on how to pose swimsuit models for beach photography, and this video with tips and tricks on swimwear photography.