Ah, that sage advice offered by Chevy Chase in one of our alltime favorite movies, Caddyshack, should be kept in mind by photographers who hoist a camera on the links.
In a nutshell, sports photography is tough. While there are lots of great sports photos published, the average newspaper is full of mediocre sports photos nearly every day. It’s hard to get a good photograph of action in most sports.
That’s the bad news. The worse news is that golf is one of the hardest sports to photograph. There’s no physical contact between players, the course is tremendous and the ball is tiny and travels very rapidly through the air. It’s hard to get a good angle without impairing the golfer’s concentration or risking getting conked by an errant drive.
Good golf photography is hard. As NYI students have learned, we say “If it’s hard, that’s terrific!” Because if it’s hard, most people won’t do it, and therefore the benefits and rewards will flow to those that do. With those words of encouragement, let’s turn to the job at hand.
The photographs you can take on the golf course can be broken into several distinct types:
The basic action photos are “big swing” pictures of golfers driving off the tee or hitting long shots in the fairway; players blasting out of sand traps and other hazards; and finally, putting on the green.
In addition there are lots of opportunities to photograph players reacting to their own shot or someone else’s. Finally, we can take “location” portraits of golfers and record some of the scenery on the course.
Before we look at each type of golf photo, it is essential that you remember that regardless of the kind of picture you want to shoot, following NYI’s Three Guidelines for Better Photographs will determine whether or not your photo succeeds.
As regular readers should know by now, NYI’s Three Guidelines are best recounted in the form of these simple questions you should ask yourself before pressing the shutter on your camera:
Guideline One: What is the subject of my photograph? Guideline Two: How can I give emphasis to my subject?