Me vs. the Beach
I like to shoot at Zuma Beach in Malibu, because of the nice, wide, clean beach, but also because of the beautiful soft light I get when it is overcast early in the morning. I book the sessions as early in the morning as possible. Since the location is around an hour's drive from the town where I live and where most of my clients live, usually 8am is the earliest session of the day. From there, I'll book a 9am and a 10am session, but after that, it is just too bright and sunny and the light is too hard to work with. I always tell my clients to book me for the earliest session if they want to get that nice, soft light. If they book the 9 or 10am session, they run the risk of the sun coming out and we miss the softer early light. The brighter light is fine too, but I just prefer the overcast lighting.
This time, the lighting was ALL over the place. When I showed up for my 8am session, the sun was out and already really bright. My first clients of the day was a family I've been photographing for 8 years now, and we were really looking forward to this beach session. Their mom specifically booked the earliest session of the day and got all three kids up and out of the house just so we could take advantage of the overcast weather. We were so disappointed, but we made the best of it. It was tricky keeping the bright sunlight off their faces, but the colors were crisp and vivid.
When the second family showed up, the weather started messing with me. The clouds came out and blocked the sun, giving me exactly the lighting I was hoping for with the first session. At first, that was great, I thought the rest of the morning was going to go my way. Ha! The sun came back out in full force about 15 minutes later. Then it disappeared behind the clouds again. Three minutes later, it was sunny. A few minutes later, cloudy. Sunny. Cloudy. Sunny. Cloudy. It was infuriating. Every time the lighting changed, I had to use my hand-held meter to get the new settings for my camera. The change in the lighting was so drastic, if I didn't notice it immediately and change my exposure settings, the shots would be completely under or over exposed.
Add to that the normal challenge of trying to photograph young kids at the beach. They are so excited to be there, and they are usually just not interested in looking at the lady with the camera. So on top of chasing kids up and down the beach, I'm having to whip out my meter every few minutes. It was an extremely hectic shoot, to say the least.
For the third session that day, I had mostly bright sun, but those pesky clouds showed up a few times, just to throw me off again.
Overall, I was happy with the images I got from my sessions that day, but I really, really, REALLY had to work for it!
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