A Hint for Photographing Golf Courses

Here's an easy hint if you are planning to take some golf course scenery shots - take a golf ball with you!

Place the ball close to the flag stick and any golfer seeing your photos will dream that it is their great shot captured at that special moment. They will infer that they are part of the scene.

Scout out possible scenes in advance and get permission from the golf course manager to photograph the course when no one is on it. Then return in early morning before sunrise when the light is soft and no golfers have started their rounds.

Set up your camera on a sturdy tripod as you will generally want a large depth of field- your shutter speed will be too slow for hand held precision. These images were 1/25 sec at f 11.

Consider taking each photo in 3 "sections" by panning left-centre-right or top-middle-bottom and then stitching the images together. In this way you can end up with a much higher quality image such as these that can easily make a poster-sized print. This will also make any lens you have seem much more "wide angle" for panorama images. I used a 90mm Canon Tilt Shift lens to "shift" for the three sections of the images now stitched together.