Professional Golf Photography

Golf Photography by The Ardrey Image Bank

Fraikin Golf Day 2011

Right from the time I saw the wide open blue skies in all directions from the Thelwall Viaduct I knew it was going to be a good day.

Whether it was just good luck or some form of divine intervention I have no idea, all as I do know is that Fraikin picked the right day to hold their 2011 golf tournament; the weather was perfect. I think I’d go as far as to say that there hadn’t been a day like it for weeks before and the days since have been nothing short of shocking.

The event at Mottram Hall consisted of all the usual www.golfday.co.uk whistles and bells and right from registration, bacon butties and coffee the whole day is sorted. By 9am the golfers were sitting round telling each other what I presume are ‘the ones that got away’ style golf stories and the atmosphere was already feeling good.

The clinics were preceded by a mass photo of everyone involved in the day - except me – and the day was off with a bang.

Obviously, the fine, sunny weather had some negatives; the contrast was massive. Add to that, the fact that the organisers wanted the pictures taken directly in to the sun and from the front of the golfer so there was an all present double danger of being blinded and killed. But as you well know, as photographers go, I am a Viking.

There are more photos of the day in the gallery. Click here to see them.

DAF Trucks Golf Day - 2011

The Oxfordshire saw ...

Bury Golf Club

A few days at Bury Golf Club taking photographs of the course and some images of golfers to be used in publicity material.

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Race to Loch Lomond - August 2010

A beautiful morning on a spookily quiet M6 turned in to a beautiful day at Wychwood Park. The course looked amazing and everyone seemed happy. It was one of those ‘what life is all about’ type of days. Eight golfers in two 4-balls had tee’d off well before 7am. I’m keen, but not that keen, so I missed them on the 1st tee. I managed to catch them as they walked off the 18th green, but they all looked a little grumpy so I left them to it, therefore, missing them again.

The norm on these days is to photograph the golfers from behind as they drive the down the first fairway. This is sensible for a number of reasons:

• Not all golfers have an ‘Ernie Els’ swing and can look very clumsy.
• Some golfers have huge beer bellies which look just terrible.
• Most golfers don’t have fat heads and look pretty damn good from behind – as long as you look no lower than their shoulders that is.
• Lots of people stand behind the person taking the shot so it is often difficult to get a satisfying background to the image.
• You need to change sides for left and right hander’s, which is a pain for all involved.
• On most courses, the view down the 1st is spectacular and gives a great background to the photo.
• It’s possible (if you’re great like me) to get the ball in the shot – I see this as the Holy Grail of golf photography.
• With the motordrive set to 7 frames per second there is a reasonable chance of catching a good shot.

Last, but not least;

• the golfer has to be extremely bad to hit me with a stray ball if I am standing behind them.

Having said all that.....

This time, following a conversation with golf pro John Cheetham, feeling confused by too much caffeine, I threw caution to the wind and tried it from the front. The club house, and the people milling around in the distance made for an interesting background. The bright sun was still quite low in the sky and it was against me; that was a bit of a challenge. I was using a 200mm lens (Canon 70mm – 200mm f2.8 L series for those who are bothered) so I was too far away for the flash to be reliably effective. I took spot light readings from the golfer’s clothing and fixed the focus on his head using the back button facility and fixed the exposure on the shutter release.

As you will understand, some golfers blame their poor play on things around them that might make a noise. So, I’m always careful to wait until the club has made contact with the ball before I press the shutter release all the way. I’m not stupid. Mind you, if you look carefully, you will see that on a few occasions this time, that the shutter was obviously released before the ball had been hit. This was a mistake caused by excitement, over enthusiasm and because I was pressing the shutter too hard. Never mind, on that day, nobody complained. I was lucky.

As usual, the photos can be downloaded free and if you want to make a large(ish) print, you should e-mail me and I’ll send you a larger file. Please don’t forget that the images are only free if you plan to use them for ‘social, domestic and pleasure purposes’ and if you require an image for commercial gain, I will almost certainly be happy for you to do so, but you need to ask and you’ll need to cross my palm with silver.

Go to the gallery and look for the album ‘Race to Loch Lomond – August 2010. There are two of them.

Cheshire Scaffolds Limited - Charity Golf Day

Driving along the East Lancs to Swinton Park Golf Club at about 7.30am, despite the windscreen wiper thrashing the rain from the screen at double speed, it was impossible to travel at more than about 20 miles per hour. Lighting flashed and thunder shook the car. At this stage I was hoping that the golf would be called off because; if it went ahead I was convinced that I’d be having to explain to my long suffering wife why camera don’t work when they’re full of water. Worse,with only a small bowl of cornflakes inside me, the conversation involving paying for new ones was something that I didn’t have the psychological strength to even consider. As it turned out, the rain miraculously stopped, the skies cleared (mostly) and the golf started pretty much on time with a shot gun, or in this case, a air horn start.

Camped out on the 18^th green with five or six hours of work ahead of me, I was beginning to wish I’d not had two cups of coffee and was even regretting the milk I’d put on my cornflakes; toast would probably have been a more sensible option.

The golfers came through at a healthy pace and soon I’d got the job sussed and all was going well. There were plenty of good angles to go for, and enough golfers landed themselves in the bunkers to keep it interesting. For the most part, the light was excellent with good cloud cover which kept the contrast to a reasonable level but still gave the light some direction. Not quite the right direction but that’s just me moaning again.

Although the golfers managed to leave bags, trolleys, flags, club covers, bottles of Lucozade Sport and umbrellas all over the place, and stand in the way of each other more often than seems like chance to me, the photo opportunities came think and fast and I soon had a couple of hundred images on the memory cards that I felt sure would satisfy the lads at Golfday.co.uk and I’d be quite happy to send to Ken Hannah at Cheshire Scaffolds.

The photos are in the gallery on this site and, as usual, are available for free download. Don’t forget that the web restricts the size of the images that can be used and so if anyone is considering making prints, I suggest that you contact me and I’ll prepare a larger file size for you to make good quality prints – this is free too. I must be bloody mad – don’t tell my wife!

The pictures can be seen here.

The Race to Loch Lomond - June 2010

The June leg of the Race to Loch Lomond 2010 was held at Wychwood Park on Friday 11th. For those that have never visited, Wychwood Park is the course with more rules than a school stationery cupboard. There are all kinds of restrictions with staked trees, environmental areas, loads of out of bounds and huge holes in the fairway from when hollow tine sessions go bad. Additionally, there are snakes, toads, newts, swans and all manner of wildlife that take precedent over the golfer and no shortage of well meaning people around the course just dying to tell you exactly what these rules are all about.

From the view point of a golf photographer, the course is essentially built on a housing estate. Either that or the houses are built on the golf course. The houses, although I’m sure they’re jolly expensive with amazing views of the course, (something which will get even better as it matures) are somehow soulless and terribly bleak looking. Not particularly the sort of place I think I’d like to live. As for the actual course, it looks like it should be a great place to photograph golf, but for some reason it just doesn’t quite cut the mustard and the place just isn’t as photogenic as first impressions would make you believe. Never mind.

At 7am, the weather was beautiful; hardly a breath of wind with a very pleasant, warm light. Sadly, by the time they first teams tee’d off, the clouds had rolled in and rain threatened. This lead to a series of lack lustre tee shots and unexciting team shots, although the trusty Speedlight sorted the team shots out for me with its usual discreet reliability. As is often the case, by 2.00pm, the wind was up, the skies had mostly cleared, the sun shone, it was f2.8 at 4,000/sec using ISO 200 and the world was all well for me. Obviously, as a golf photographer, I have to moan about something; so for today’s grump, I’ll go for the massive contrast and maybe the fact that the 18th green faces the wrong way for a late afternoon finish. However, as a tog with 30 odd years experience, I spit in the face of contrast and, I just made do with the green facing the wrong way. Let’s face it, all the experience in the world won’t turn a green round to face the other way.

Anyway, here’s the photo’s from the day. As usual, they are free to download should you choose to do so. The size of the images on the web are really only suitable for use on the web for the likes of Facebook and e-mail and the like. This means that anything but the smallest print will look terrible. So if you want a larger file, I have all the photo’s sized up to 7”x 5” prints and I’ll be happy to send them to you. That’ll be free too - just e-mail me and ask.

More pictures in the next few days - keep checking - Click here.

The Race to Loch Lomond - May 2010

On a cold, and rather miserable day with the constant threat of rain, the May heat of the Race to Loch Lomond tee'd off at Mottram Hall. Dispite the weather, the players were on good form and the day provided some good opportunities for some great shots.

All the scores from the day and details of the next heat will be shown on www.golfday.co.uk and click here to be taken to the gallery of the photographs from the May heat of the Race to Loch Lomond.

Police v. The Prison Service Golf Challenge 2010

A fantastic day at Mottram Hall on Wednesday saw the 4th Police v Prison Service Golf Challenge. The day was organised by GolfDay.co.uk the weather was pretty much perfect and the smiling faces of the golfers as they enjoyed the sun (for probably the first time this year) helped provided more photo opportunities than a day on the Harry Potter film set with the entire cast of America’s Next Top Model. The scores looked pretty good and most people seemed quite happy with their performance on the day. Mind you, as far as I’m concerned, there were disappointingly few bunker shots and nowhere near enough people having to hack their way out of the rough. Those sorts of golf shots make the best photographs you see. But never mind, you can’t have everything and there was still lots to take pictures of anyway.

As I’ve said, although there was no shortage of great photo opportunities, as is always the case, a number of good photos were prevented from being great by the propensity of golfers to throw the flag on to the green just a couple of feet from the hole or to stand so close to their competitors that they look like they’re joined at the hip and some rake bunkers in the background. However, worse even than all that, and far more common, they leave their golf bags about 6 inches away from the ball. Which is a disappointment.

To the left is an example of just such a photograph. Imagine how much better this shot would have been without the golf bag in the background. Shame, but whatthehellcanyoudoaboutit?

Here is a small sample of the photographs taken on the day, you'll see loads more by clicking here and looking for the album. THere are 4 albums from the day - Team Photos, Mega Drives, Play and The Presentation.

Free to download

If you'd like a copy of any the images, simply click on the 'Download' tab which is to be found at the bottom right corner of the photograph. The images are sized for use with e-mail, Facebook and bloggs etc. and, although it should be possible to make a small, reasonable quality print, large prints will look terrible.

So....

If you'd like to make a larger print, please e-mail me (use the contact facility on this website) and I'll send you an appropriately sized file.

Lot's more golf photographs

There are hundreds of other golf photographs on this website, just click on any of the images below to be taken to the gallery.