Hey Internet, meet Carley. This is our Sandbanks photo shoot at Sandbanks Provincial Park, which features large sand dunes — a rarity in Ontario. Although we only made minor use of the dunes, the park itself is beautiful and has three large beaches with calm waters.
Carley lives close to Sandbanks and I’d always wanted to go check it out, so it was only natural that we met up there for a Sandbanks photo shoot. Though it can get insanely busy on sunny summer days and especially on weekends, we picked a weekday evening to make sure we avoided the crowds.
Aside from a beach towel, I kept to my more recent philosophy of packing light and brought only my Nikon D750, Nikon 50mm ƒ/1.4G, and Nikon 70-200mm ƒ/2.8G VR II packed into my Lowepro Transit Backpack 350 AW.
One nice thing about a Sandbanks photo shoot is that the dunes are huge and spaced apart — there was ample room, for instance, for me to sit on one dune, and zoom in on Carley on another dune a couple hundred feet away with the 70-200mm lens. It’s the opposite of working in a tiny photo studio. Likewise when Carley decided to climb the semi-submerged tree, there was plenty of space for me to wade out into the water and get a nice long telephoto shot. This didn’t hold true down at the edge of the beach, however, where the sand slopes towards the water. So to achieve the final shots of Carley where she was sitting in the shallow water and I was level with her (instead of looking down at her from the elevated sand), I had to switch to my 50mm lens. This gave me a wider angle of view.
Carley’s two bikinis were from La Vie En Rose. You can follow Carley on Instagram.
Shop for the gear I used on this Sandbanks photo shoot
- Nikon D750 FX DSLR Camera with Meike MK-DR750 Battery Grip
- Nikon 50mm FX ƒ/1.4G AF-S Lens
- Nikon 70-200mm FX ƒ/2.8G ED VR II AF-S Zoom Lens
- Lowepro Transit Backpack 350 AW
Click/tap photos below to enlarge
Out of curiosity, was the area affected by the high water levels this year?
It sure was. The lake level was higher than normal and we had to wade through nearly thigh-high water leftover from the flooding to get to the dunes.
Haven’t been there in a long time, I’m just wondering what effect long term the high water levels are going to do.
Awesome shots though.