Do you love going to the beach? Most of us do, especially beaches with white sand and crystal-clear water.

Key points: The Shoalhaven has more than 100 beaches

The Shoalhaven has more than 100 beaches Sixteen of the beaches share the same white sands made famous by popular Hyams Beach

Sixteen of the beaches share the same white sands made famous by popular Hyams Beach Many of the beaches are remote and require a lengthy walk through national parks to access

Jervis Bay, on the New South Wales south coast, is well known for Hyams Beach, but it has 16 beaches with the same beautiful white sand and yet hardly anyone visits them.

A local campaign that started two years ago is challenging locals and visitors to explore more of the beautiful beaches along the shoreline — and it has been working.

South coast photographer Andy Hutchinson was approached by the local council's tourism department two years ago and commissioned to photograph 100 of the region's beaches.

South coast photographer Andy Hutchinson was commissioned to photograph 100 of the Shoalhaven's beaches. It took him four months to complete the job. ( ABC Illawarra: Sarah Moss )

There are 107 beaches in the region but seven were cut from the list.

"Some of them just aren't terribly photogenic and they wanted a nice round number, so they rounded it off to 100," Mr Hutchinson said.

Over a period of four months, he used a single lens reflex camera and a drone to capture images of every one of them.

A 'dream job'

"It was a bit of a dream job being paid to go and take photographs on 100 of the Shoalhaven's beaches," Mr Hutchinson said.

"The most northern beach would be mid Seven Mile Beach but local's call it Berry's Beach, and the last beach I did was North Durras."

Andy Hutchinson's drone enables him to take photos from the sky. ( Supplied: Andy Hutchinson )

Mr Hutchinson bought his first drone in the middle of the project.

"The first half are straight DSLR photographs and the second half are a mixture of the two," he said.

"It was really interesting for me to go to places that I'd never heard of. Exploring these out of the way places like Snake Bay in the middle of the Murramarang National Park and some other beaches like Bull Pup Beach down near Termeil," Mr Hutchinson said.

If he took anything with him apart from his camera it was his sense of adventure.

"I'd spend a bit of time on each beach thinking about what makes it unique, what is it that stands out about this beach that I need to encapsulate and then I'd go off and take the photographs with that in mind," he said.

"For example, Hyams Beach has the white sands and Seven Mile Beach is wild, so I looked for distinguishing features," he said.

Hyams Beach is the most popular in the area and can be overcrowded. ( Supplied: Andy Hutchinson )

"I would encourage people to explore some of these lesser known beaches rather than the tourist flagship beaches like Hyams which is a fairly hellish place to visit in the summer," Mr Hutchinson said.

"The traffic conditions are terrible but I understand why people want to go to Hyams — it's a stunning white sand beach but it's so popular and there's so many incredible beaches in this amazing part of Australia.

I think you'd be crazy to restrict yourself to the one that everyone else goes to."

Murray's Beach is just one of sixteen beaches sharing the same white sands and crystal waters of Hyams Beach. ( Supplied: Andy Hutchinson )

While on the job, Mr Hutchinson discovered Snake Bay which is tucked away in the Murramarang National Park in between Pretty Beach and Pebbly Beach.

"It's just this beautiful remote wild incredibly scenic spot. When I got there the first thing I did was sat down and ate my sandwiches. There was just me and a sea eagle and some dolphins and nobody anywhere — it was just the loveliest place I have ever been to in my life," Mr Hutchinson said.

Encouraging people to explore beaches other then Hyams is exactly where the #100 beach challenge came from, tourism manager Coralie Bell said.

Use a map or an app

'The idea came about as a middle-of-the-night fix to some challenges we were having to lots of people visiting one or two beaches and the neighbouring beaches being empty," Ms Bell said.

"The beauty of the challenge is that it's not about how fast or how clever you do it, it's just about, 'Have you done it, have you seen them all?' Lots of our locals haven't see all our beaches," Ms Bell said.

The challenge has been working well and with more than 8,000 participants, the competition has not lost any momentum.

The beaches are grouped into categories including best bush to beach, best for families, best for walking, camping by the beach, surfing, 24-hour pet friendly, secret beaches, best Instagram spots and whitest sand.

Beaches in the #100 Beach Challenge have online Google pins which are activated when you are close to them when using the web app. ( ABC Illawarra: Sarah Moss )

"If you are digitally savvy, there's a web application you can go to. You click on a map, find a beach nearest to you and mark them off by taking a photo," Ms Bell said.

"One woman raised money for a charity by walking the 165 kilometres hitching rides across the inlets and she did it in about a week."

The project lends itself to being a creative photographic experience as well. Look for the tag #100 Beach Challenge on Instagram and you'll find thousands of images depicting these beautiful locations each one as unique as the photographer's experience.