Photographer Sutton Lynch captures the hidden sea

The hammerhead sliced through the still waters off Amagansett, almost invisible to anyone nearby.

But not to Sutton Lynch, who captured a striking image of the shark from his drone in August 2024. The aerial photographer has been taking pictures of marine life from East End beaches since noticing its resurgence off the South Shore in 2019. The eerily beautiful photo is one of his favorites, Lynch, 25, said on a recent morning at his East Hampton home and studio.

“This is one of the most satisfying and strikingly beautiful sights I have ever documented,” he wrote on his Instagram feed, @SuttonLynch, where nearly 45,000 followers keep track of his work.

“It’s impossible to not fall in love with the ocean,” Lynch wrote on another post. And he clearly has — his photographs and videos document mesmerizing patterns of rays pursuing baitfish, striped bass on their annual migration, humpback whales barreling out of the ocean, dolphins cavorting in the waves and vast schools of menhaden, the fish upon which many of the other species feed.

Growing up in East Hampton, Lynch was never far from the beach. He got his first camera when he was 12, initially taking pictures of insects and flowers. For a few years, he said, he was into astrophotography, taking pictures of the heavens. But he recalled really falling in love with photography when he was 17. “That was a pivotal moment in my artistic career,” he said.

While being homeschooled for a year, he traveled the country in an RV with his parents and younger sister, spending most of the time in various national parks where he got shots of the impressive scenery. At Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Lynch said he studied the intersection of environmental art and ecology. When he came back to Long Island to work as a lifeguard over the summer, he began developing his interest in marine photography and conservation. He got his first drone when he was 18, and that, he said “is when it all came together.

SEEING AN EBB

Most mornings from May to early November, you’ll find Lynch on the beach, ranging from Montauk to Amagansett. He likes to go early. If it’s a good day, he’ll stay until dusk.

“Golden Hour on Long Island. There’s nothing quite like it,” he wrote on Instagram. “The first and last few minutes of daylight are hypnotic — delicate moments when every shape and shadow is flooded with rose-gold lights. I often feel as though I’m experiencing the world for the first time.”

The work requires a lot of patience, Lynch said a little later in the day as he prepared to send his drone out at Atlantic Beach in Amagansett. With winds kicking up in advance of an approaching nor’easter, the results were disappointing. The water was too choppy to see much.

“It’s best when there’s minimal wind,” he told a reporter, noting it’s the only time the waters are clear enough to picture sea life at the surface. “But I can’t complain. I’m in a beautiful place.”

That said, summer 2025 was something of a bummer for Lynch. Anglers, conservationists and whale-watching boat captains said there was a marked decline in the menhaden population, Newsday has reported, resulting in fewer sightings of, well, pretty much everything — especially the humpback whales, which appeared more regularly a couple years back. A smaller menhaden population can mean less of everything else in the sea.

“We’re trying to engage people on why menhaden are important,” said Ryan Lockwood, communications manager for the Washington, D.C.-based Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. And he said Lynch is a good way to do that. “He’s an engaged naturalist; he clearly cares about conservation and the marine environment.”

The agency’s mission is to guarantee that Americans have quality places to hunt and fish, and a lot of that includes making sure we have stable populations of wildlife, said Lockwood. The group will use Lynch’s photos and videos to promote its conservation efforts. His work is “astounding,” Lockwood noted. “It’s amazing to see those schools of fish and their predators from that perspective. It’s almost poetic.”
  

SHARK-FRIENDLY

Much of Lynch’s work involves photographing sharks, which he believes shouldn’t be feared to the extent they are. “There’s a lot of hysteria out there that isn’t necessary,” Lynch said, pointing out that sharks have always been around. With the increased use of drones, people have become more aware, he said, but “it’s the ocean, it’s where they live.”

In past years, Lynch has been on the East Hampton Town payroll notifying officials of any shark sightings, which he said he has seen as close as 500 yards from the shore. He gave up that side gig last summer, though he said he still calls if he notices unusual activity. Many species, like the basking shark, are docile, he said, and most would much rather munch on a menhaden than on human swimmers.

As to great whites, thus far Lynch said he has only photographed juveniles, which are 4 or 5 feet long at birth (a sexually mature female is about 15 feet long, which may not occur until it is close to 30 years old). He believes the first great white he photographed (off Montauk) was just a few weeks old. “The South Shore is a known white shark nursery,” he said, with females giving birth to two to 10 pups at a time. The newborns spend the first year of life in these waters. “It’s where the pups kind of learn and grow and figure things out,” he said.

If Lynch is afraid of anything in the ocean, it’s bluefish. “They’re nasty,” he said. “They have razor-sharp teeth and they’re much less picky about their food.” People have been bitten, he said, but the fish are easy to spot. “They come through in big schools, and you can see their fins pop up.”

STUDIO VISITS

After graduating from college in 2022, Lynch started thinking about a career path. For a while, he said, he sold his photographs at art fairs and, on occasion, from his driveway. Once he decided to make a career of it, he opened his studio last year in a contemporary home on a quiet residential lane. He schedules studio sessions in his open-air gallery several times a summer and in early fall (they’re announced on his Instagram page). Among his bestselling pieces is a black-and-white photograph of a massive wave, taken after a storm in 2024, that captures its immense power.

Lynch’s work captures “a lot of what’s wild” about the East End, said Fox Walton, 46, who has followed the photographer on Instagram for a year and a half. The photos “make that part of the world more special to me,” said Walton, who didn’t grow up on the beach but now splits his time between Manhattan and East Hampton. The photos, he said, are “a reminder of how close the wildlife is in the water.”

Walton recently purchased one of Lynch’s pictures, a shot of roiling waves breaking on the beach taken after Hurricane Erin in August. “I’m drawn to that type of imagery,” Walton said. “I find the ocean fascinating in terms of how massive and violent it can be,” although he said what amazes him most about the photograph is “the way he captured the light. It almost looks like a painting.”

Lynch described the series of storm photos on Instagram as “beautiful chaos.”

“As Hurricane Erin tracked past Long Island, the ocean lifted . . . waves over 10 feet, driven by strong offshore winds, created a sight I’ve witnessed only a handful of times — a humbling reminder of the ocean’s power,” he wrote on Instagram.

Lynch, a self-described perfectionist, recently started constructing frames for some of his photographs, which are printed in a variety of materials, including cotton rag paper, aluminum or textured cotton mounted between museum-quality acrylic.

FRAMING AND SELLING

“I like to have some control over how they look,” said Lynch, explaining that the right frame “completely changes the way a photo looks.” He uses white oak and walnut to create the frames, some very simple, others more substantial and dramatic. (The photos can be purchased online at suttonlynch.com, with prices ranging from about $125 for a small paper print to as much as $7,500 for large print in a hand-built frame.)

As the season comes to a close, Lynch said he is preparing to spend the winter in New York City, exploring ways to market and expand his business.

“It’s tricky. I’ve largely been relying on social media,” he said. He added that he’s trying to think creatively, looking into potential exhibits beyond traditional gallery shows. “I want to do something different. I don’t mind the idea of a gallery, but it’s really important to me to approach the art world in a new way. I think things have generally become a bit stale. I want to create a show, an environment that feels open and accepting.”

But by May, Lynch will surely be back on the beach, his draw to the sea inexorable. He hopes people will not only appreciate his art, but learn from his efforts.

“There is a huge disconnect between people and the environment, but the more you know about an animal, the more you appreciate it, and the more you’re inclined to do something to protect it,” he said.

For Lynch, the work brings constant wonder.

“I’m in awe of this,” he said, surveying his gallery. “I’m constantly amazed by how different the ocean is. It’s like an alien landscape. . . . There’s a power and an energy around the ocean that is kind of hard to wrap my mind around.”