Kid's at the Beach

MarkBarbieri

We take a trip out to Pacific Grove, CA every year or two. The kids love playing at the beach. Usually, I stand back and fire away with a long lens, isolating the kids. This year I wanted to try something different. I used a wide angle lens and shot closer and lower than usual. My goal was to get shots that were at "kid" level and that included more of the background for context.

The biggest problem that I encountered was framing. Because I was close and because the kids were frequently moving, I had to run and shoot at the same time. Because I also wanted to shoot from a relatively low perspective, that meant just holding the camera down at arms length and shooting while running. Maybe next year I'll rig something up with video glasses, live view, and video out. For this year, I just took a bunch of shots and fixed up the framing in post production the best I could.

Anyway, here are the results. If you want to see more shots, EXIF data, or a higher res version of shots, click on the link and it will take you to that shot on my Smugmug site.

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NeilL

I like #6 best, but would like to see it with a different crop with portrait orientation which left in the top of the head. With most of them I'd like to get in closer.

Are they a little underexposed? If they're in RAW I'd suggest experimenting with exposure and levels.

I like where you're coming from in terms of dynamism. I think orienting the camera differently to the straight-on horizontal might give you more. You almost do that in the last one.

Thanks.

Neil