There is a spot at the north end of Ocean City, underneath the bridge, where you can stand in one place and watch the sun go down over the bay on one side and the light come off the ocean on the other. Almost nobody is ever there. You can park twenty feet away. I have been shooting there for years and I still have not gotten tired of it.
I Photographed Her Wedding First
I shot the Feldscher wedding at Renault Winery right after COVID, back when nobody was certain a wedding was going to be allowed to happen at all. They are the kind of couple who collects good people, and their friends were as much fun as they are.
A while later she reached out about a family session. Not for the two of them. For her whole family, as a birthday gift for her mom.
That is a good gift. Most of what we buy each other disappears inside a year. A set of photographs of everybody, made on one good evening, does not. This is a big part of why I keep photographing families I first met on a wedding day. The wedding is the introduction. The family sessions are the actual relationship.
The Spot Under the Bridge
The family loves Ocean City, so the town was decided before I got involved. The specific location was mine.
The north end is the quiet end. The bridge crosses over toward the next town, and underneath it there is sand, concrete pilings the size of tree trunks, a low ledge right at the water line, and a long stretch of flat wet sand that turns into a mirror when the tide is right. It reads almost like standing on the end of a peninsula. In the middle of a June evening in a beach town, that kind of empty is rare and it is worth driving for.
Groupings First, While Everyone Is Still Being Polite
We started with the structured work, because that is always the smart order. Whole family first, then smaller groupings, then the couples, then mom and dad with one person at a time. Everyone is a little stiff at the beginning of a session and that is completely normal, so I use that window for the pictures that need people standing where I put them.
The pilings do a lot of work here. They frame a group without me having to say anything, and the light coming under the bridge is soft and directional at the same time, which is a combination you do not get on open sand.
Then Everybody Got Their Feet Wet
Once we had the groupings, I got everyone onto the ledge with their feet in the water. That is the turning point in almost every beach session I photograph. The second people are willing to get wet, they stop performing and start behaving like themselves, and the photographs change immediately.
This family did not need much encouragement. Shoes came off, everybody waded out, and from that point on my job was mostly to keep up.
Mom and Dad, On Their Own
Somewhere in there I pulled mom and dad away from everyone else and walked them out into the shallow water by themselves.
I do this at every family session and I will keep doing it. The parents are usually the ones who booked the session, paid for it, organized everyone, and then spent the whole evening making sure the group looked right. They almost never end up with a photograph of just the two of them.
For a lot of couples, the last real photographs of the two of them alone are from their wedding day. That could easily be twenty or thirty years ago. Fifteen minutes fixes that, and it is consistently the part of the gallery the family reacts to hardest.
Running, Splashing, Nobody Posing
The rest of the family was in the water by then too. Walking out, running back in, splashing, cutting through the reflections. I stopped directing almost entirely and just worked the light.
Silhouettes as the Light Dropped
This is my favorite part of the whole session, and it is the reason I push this location on people.
As the sun got low it dropped straight down the line of the bridge and lit the wet sand from behind, so every person out there picked up a full mirrored reflection underneath them. We put mom and dad out on that sand facing each other with the sun coming through between them. Then the family lined up in a row, backs to me, facing the light with the bridge running off behind them.
Silhouettes work because they take everything else away. No outfits, no expressions, nothing to fix in your head about how you looked that day. Just shapes and who was holding onto whom.
Individual Portraits Too
Any time I photograph a family group, I pull people aside one at a time for a portrait of just them. It takes about fifteen minutes for a whole family and it is the thing people are most glad to have years later.
A group photograph records who was there. An individual portrait records what one person looked like that year, at that age, in that light. Those are two different things and you want both. Because they are all made in the same spot inside the same hour, the light matches across every face, which is why a set like this hangs together as one piece of wall art. Here is part of the set from this evening.
If You Are Thinking About a Beach Session
Two things I would tell anyone considering this. Book the evening, not the middle of the day, and pick the quiet end of whatever town you love. The beach in front of the boardwalk at two in the afternoon is a hard place to make a good photograph. The same beach a mile north at seven in the evening is one of the easiest.
And if you are trying to figure out what to get a parent who does not want anything, this session is the answer. It was a birthday gift, and it ended with the family lined up on that wet sand, facing the last of the light.
Location: the north end of Ocean City, New Jersey
Photography: Jordan Brian Studios
Ready to Start Planning?
If your family is thinking about a session at the shore, or anywhere else in South Jersey or Philadelphia, I would love to hear about it. You can see more family sessions in the portfolio, read about how family sessions work, take a look at a family reunion session in Philadelphia, or get in touch and tell me what you have in mind.