I have just started a website called
www.GolfArchitecturePictures.com with the specific goal of showing a large selection of pictures of many different golf courses around the world (such as the tough and beautiful 17th hole of Carne Belmullet shown below).
By putting my collection of golf course pictures online, I wanted to make it possible for other golf enthousiasts all over the world to benefit from accessing and using these pictures.
The emphasis of the site will not be on showing the best quality pictures of golf courses, but rather on showing a large number of details of holes, greens, tees, bunkers, water hazards etc of many golf courses.
So far I have uploaded pictures of 65 golf courses in Ireland, UK, Holland, Belgium, France and Germany. In the next few weeks pictures of another 65 golf courses will follow. Unfortunately the quality of some of the the older pics is not not so great, but I hope to replace them over time, either with newer pictures I made myself or using pictures from other contributors .....
The goal is to continue adding pictures of interesting golf courses from around the globe to this site, if possible aided by other golf players/architects/enthusiasts who are also willing to SHARE their treasured pictures they have built up over many years. (I kind of see this as an Open Source golf course pictures project).
The site will NOT BE COMMERCIAL, but rather will be a free visual encyclopedia for people interested in classic, modern, links, parkland, beautiful or even ugly and poor golf courses.
Visitors of the site are allowed to download medium resolution samples of the pictures for non-commercial use, however the copyright remains with the person who made the picture. Permission is required from the person who made the picture before any commercial use; e-mail links are provided with the web photo galleries.
Next to downloading people can also link to the pictures on the site, say during a discussion on Golf Club Atlas.
The long term vision is to develop a site with tons of pictures of hundreds/thousands of golf courses. A site where it is possible to look up a picture of a typical Colt bunker at Swinley Forest, a McKenzie green at Alwoodley, a Doak hole on Barnbougle Dunes and a Pete Dye water hazard at TPC Sawgrass etc etc....
People interested in contributing pictures should see if they have pictures of courses that are on the list (or should be on the list) but which are not yet covered (these courses are not underlined). Alternatively, if you have newer, more detailed or better quality pictures of courses that are covered, these are also more than welcome.
What are the requirements of the pictures? In terms of quality they should be made with a 3 Mega Pixels digital camera or better (the pics on the site are 1024 x 768 pixels). In terms of quantity golf course pictures should include views from the tee, landing area, green , bunkers, hazards etc. In most cases between 100 to 200 pictures per 18 holes golf course gives enough detail.
You can either send your pictures on a CD-Rom or DVD-Rom to the address on the website, or zip the files and send them to the email address on the website using a service like
www.YouSendIt.com. Please send the pictures full size. Ofcourse all contibutors will be named/acknowledged on the site.
I am also interested in your input and help on listing the relevant golf courses per country/state. For the European countries I am using my own experience aided by the Peugeot guide, but I'm sure I have also missed a number of gems that should be on the list...
Finally, all your feedback and comments about the site will be much appreciated.