Yesterday was all about fall but today is all about THE BEACH!
I love the beach more than anything – just ask my husband! – and combining my love of the ocean with my love of photography was SO FUN in Florida a few weeks ago! This was my third time teaching at Click Away and I felt so lucky to lead such fun and interactive classes with so many amazing students. I taught this class twice and both experiences were amazing!
Since my classes were at totally different times, I decided to dress my models totally different from one another. My first class was in the middle of the afternoon and, since I knew that the sun would most likely be crazy, I decided to go for fun and bright clothes – rompers, dresses, and kimonos! Our models – Latashia, Tyrie, Julia, and Amber – were the best sports! The water was freezing but they all were up for anything and didn’t even complain when they got drenched! These girls are the best!
Wanting their outfits to be super flirty, the girls wore a mix of Forever 21, Shop Impressions, and ASOS.
How cute is Tyrie?!
I love movement in all photographs but water lends so much magic and movement – the way it moves and ripples and sways adds so much character to static images – and, when I took these photographs of Tyrie , she got hit by a HUGE wave and, every time I look at these, I can still hear her laughing. So much fun!
P.S. Tyrie totally modeled for me in Seattle, too! Love her!
My second water class was first thing on Sunday morning!
Since we were staying on the east coast on our shoot started pretty early, I crossed my fingers that we’d have good light, grabbed a dress I’ve wanted for, like, ever from Amazon and then pulled together dresses from past styled shoots that were stored in my office closet (you can see Meagan in this Amazon dress, Maggie in this Boohoo dress from ASOS, and Lucie in this ASOS dress!). and we went for it! The backlight from this shoot was so dreamy and I feel so lucky that, with two different classes, we scored such different light and such different vibes – these were all taken in pretty much the same spot on the beach!
Still can’t get over how gorgeous these turned out! Anne, Beth, Miranda (who has the CUTEST insta-famous corgi ever), and Alex were so much fun to shoot! It was a wonderful morning!
There were twenty-five attendees in both classes and it was so fun seeing everyone shoot in the water – most of them had never shot in the water before and it was so fun to see lightbulbs go off! I already gushed a bit about how much I love the movement water brings into photographs but my other favorite thing is light. Depending on the sky and the time of day, water often works as a reflector and it’s so fun – and challenging! – to try and find the balance between the sun and the light source coming from the water. It’s almost like you have to take everything you know about metering and exposure and throw it out the window to make a compromise so that, when you get the photographs on the computer, you can find the middle ground to bring back the sky and your subject and it is so challenging and fun and awesome.
Whew! That was a total tangent. I LOVE photography and I love these photos!!
Thanks so much for having me as an instructor this year, Click Away!! The conference was perfect!
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Lissa Chandler is a creative senior portrait and wedding photographer based in Fayetteville, Arkansas who fell in love with water portraits in the summer of 2013 when she shot this creek session and came home with at least twenty mosquito bites and a million ideas.
