WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2017
You’ve been there in those special moments when the light hits the hole ahead of you just right. You run to your cart to grab your phone for the sake of its camera. It’s time to capture that perfect shot. Is your phone good enough? And if so, how do you capture the moment at its best? Professional photographer Gary Christopher, who also leads a Links Fellowship in Texas, gives us some hints for creating great golf course photographs.
Know your camera
Twenty years ago, 30 years ago it was very important to have some efficiency in the nomenclature of your camera. Now the phones work so good, I’m glad I’m not still in the business! Those iPhones, I’m telling you, you can enlarge them, you can edit them, you can shoot so fast, you can record it, you can see what you’ve got–they’re beautiful. Back in the day, most of the time I shot on manual so that I could control the exposure.
Keep it level
Always keep the camera level. Don’t ever have it tilted and make it look like you were drinking two beers before you ever had a camera in your hand. Keeping that parallel to the earth’s surface is important.
Find the right time of exposure
This is one of the top factors. If you’re just going out to photograph a course that you love, the time that you go out is very important. Two hours after sunrise and two hours before sunset are very important. That’s when the sweetest light occurs. Not often are we there right after sunrise, but we could be. Many times we’re there two hours before sunset. Those are just prime times for photographing golf courses, simply because of the light. The way those courses are made and built and where they are, you can see so much more of the flow of the land and how the bunkers are structured. If you grew up at Tyrrell Park in Beaumont, the bunkers are only a foot and a half deep, but so many of the bunkers today are 12 feet deep. That sweet light and that sunset light are so important. They show the depth of the bunkers. So one of the biggest factors is the time that you shoot. If you’re at high noon on the prettiest course in the world, it’s not going to look as pretty as it would when the sweet light is occurring early and late. My best photographs have been made during those times of sweet light.
Use haze to your advantage
Also some of the best photographs I’ve made have had some haze to it–early morning haze occurred and stayed for a couple of hours. I shot rapidly one time knowing that it was about to disappear. I was hauling around in a golf cart with a 12-foot ladder, just so that I could capture a few of the holes that I remembered previously that were so good. So haze and a light fog are certainly factors in beauty if that’s what you’re looking for.
Capture the change of seasons
Another factor is the change of seasons. Our course here (in Bryant, Texas) will look better in about three weeks because of some of the oak trees that will change. The bunkers will look so good because of the quality of light. They don’t overseed here, so it will still be pretty. That’s just a valuable asset of courses. Then in the springtime here, and it may be in your area too, there are so many variations of green. And flowers too. We have roses in February and March and azaleas will pop for a short period of time. Not only flowers, but the trees and the change of seasons. Variations of the tones of trees are important, I think.
Check the course condition
I always tried to make sure that the course was in good condition. First, trash. Then the rakes. Do they leave them in the bunkers? Do they have them on the edge? Do they always have them outside the perimeter? Does it look crazy having two rakes laid on top of each other? There was a time when I photographed the course and it rained heavily two days before and people had messed it up on a number of holes with the golf carts. You saw tracks. So the condition of course is very important unless you want to do some retouching.
Identify the course
Most of the time I needed to identify the course somehow. If it was Whistling Straits, I needed it show it’s on the lake. I needed to go to number seven first, because there are some unique features of where it is on the golf course. At St. Andrews, you can be on 12 of the holes and probably couldn’t tell it from Turnberry or Troon, but it’s St. Andrews. I climbed up the CBS Tower and did a panoramic view that shows the number one green, the eighteenth tee, the Swilcan Bridge, and has the town in the background with the R&A. They know that’s the home of golf because of what it shows in the background. If I would have gone to number twelve, thirteen, or fourteen to photograph it, even showing some of the deep bunkers and the expanse of the green, I don’t think too many people, unless you know the course well, would have identified it.
Include the clubhouse
When we were at Royal County Down, there was a lot of dramatic scenery and holes. It was hard to show the ocean nearby, but you could certainly show that clubhouse. So clubhouses are important to identify the course and show its uniqueness.
Consider elevation
I’ve shot from elevation before, from a balloon, with people holding it, trusting they weren’t going to let me loose. I photographed two courses from a balloon and do you know that it didn’t make the course look better or didn’t please the owners. I thought it would. I photographed them from helicopters, just many times for aerial photographs. I thought working from the balloon would be worth it, but the owners didn’t like the looks of it. They wanted it ground level. So I kept it at a flatter height sometimes. I always carried a ladder with me, but ground level and ladder height were so much better. But that’s just from my experience. The next guy that got up there might have his drone, which I’ve never had, and he might get the best shots you’ve ever seen from his drone.
Reach to infinity
Another thing when I was thinking about my best shots that would have gone in a book or been sellable is that the hole always showed to infinity. My best shots always showed a long ways–some of them telephoto, some of them wide angle, some of them even at panoramic, like at St. Andrews (above), which was a two-shot panoramic that I put together. Including that sky seemed to always help in the vision of it.
Those are some of the factors that I’ve used as I’ve photographed throughout the world. A lot of them were done for the owners of the golf course. Some, I just happened to be at, like St. Andrews or a Troon or Turnberry. I always had my camera with me, but now it is so easy for all of us to have a suitable way to capture it. Those iPhones are certainly worthy.