a pet peeve of mine....is it yours?

[scott wood]

twas the sunday before Christmas,31 degrees, snow on the ground, Giants behind (again), when, in anticipation of Santa's coming delivery of new golf books, i reached to the shelves and reviewed soem old favorites with pictures.

while leafing through george peper's "500 Best Holes" i came to the same conclusion i have ,continually, in the past......

I REALLY DON'T LIKE PICTURES OF GOLF HOLES TAKEN FROM "NON-PLAYING  ANGLES!!!

now, i fully realize that on a well designed hole there can be several options one can take to reach the pin, and that even on a 1960's bowling alley hole, our collective group of GCAers can inadvertantly approach the hole from many different directions, BUT.....

what i object to are photos, that maybe/are photogenic, but distort my perception/remembrance of the hole.

oh well, perhaps santa's gifts will be different this year..i hope..

a Merry Christmas to all who make this a delightful site to visit!!!

[BillV]

Scott

How else would we get all those pretty calendar pictures?  Got a point there!

[ed getka]

It annoys me in 500...holes that they reversed at least a few photos. Check out the redan at NGLA and I think #10 at Riviera (one is right and one is reversed). Otherwise I think I would prefer an approach shot view (probably not very photogenic for the masses though), or an aerial view to see the shape of the hole and hazard orientation. Merry Xmas

[Ed_Baker]

Scott:

Good point. Several of those photographers should spend some time with the brother's Morrisett. Just scroll through the "course profile" section of this site, pretty neat pics in there, don't you think?

[Jeff Mingay]

Interesting point, Scott. This is something I've been struggling with in completely the club history I've done for Essex.

Essex is a very difficult course to photograph, because it's so flat. Most of the best photos of the holes are from odd angles, but I also perfer something similiar to how the holes are actually played.

Don't know what we're going to do yet, as we've just started sorting through the hole photos. But we'll probably use a combination of both.  

[Peter Galea]

Damn photographers.
It's a curse, always looking for the best angle and best light.
I'm guilty, always zipping  off to the left rought or high spot to enhance the features. I'd love a helicopter or "genie" lift more often than not.
It's a 2D thing. It would probably work with a stereo camera, but having  only a single "eye" perspective and depth perception suffers. No matter how much I think I am, I guess I'm not Ansel Adams or Edward Weston.

[scott wood]

pete....you might not rival ansel with a lens , but i'm sure your ground game would whup him at least 5 and 3!!!i

[Brad Klein]

Couldn't disagree more. A photograph is an artistic re-presentation, a composition in its own right. The point is to use it to create angles of vision and imagery that make us think differently about what we thought we were looking at.

I still recall the greatest photo of a golf hole I've ever seen - a black and white image form the 1920s of the Dolomites at Somerset Hills CC. Never even showed the green. But I learned more about Tillinghast than anything else I've ever seen of his golf holes.

Another case in point. This summer, I happened to view the 1st hole at Atlanta Athletic Club during the PGA Championship from behind the first green. I was stunned at how out of place all of those mounds looked. Nothing fit with the surrounds. Too bad I didn't have a camera. But It showed more about the golf course than any pictorial image down the middle I had seen.

I think it's crucial for creative photographers to use light, shadow, angle, height to create an image that's at odds with our immediate eye. Otherwise, it's like limiting literature to pure realist description.

[Tim_Weiman]

Scott:

One of the nicest golf tournament programs I've seen was put together for the 1985 Walker Cup at Pne Valley.

There is a section called "Splendor In The Grass".  Almost all of the pictures were from playing angles you really don't see when playing the course.  I thought it was a very nice feature.

In case you are wondering if the program also included pictures of each hole as the player actually sees it, yes it did.

I was fortunate this fall to spend an afternoon with one of golf's leading photographers: John Henebry.  The venue was Pacific Dunes.  I discovered that John's philosophy was consistent with the Pine Valley program.

So, in sum, I wouldn't be happy if the photographic documentation of a hole only showed non playing angles, but I do think such pictures can add something different, something worthwhile.

[jglenn]

I've been trying to dip my toes in the field of golf course photography myself (just got a camera tripod for Xmas!   ).  One of the books I have on photography, in a section entitled "using your feet", explains the value of these "non-play" angles for landscape photography:

Laziness is without a doubt the biggest obstacle standing in the way of photographers when it comes to shooting the landscape.  It is all too easy to start firing away the minute you come across an interesting scene, but while this approach is convenient, it rarely produces the best pictures.

The thing is, you cannot expect to make the most of a scene by accepting the first viewpoint you come across - particularly if all you have done is stopped the car and started shooting from the side of the road (or stopped the cart and started shooting from the middle of the fairway).  You need to wander around and explore your subject from all angles and viewpoints.  There is only so much you can see from where you are standing, and the most interesting aspects of the landcape tend to be in the more out-of-the-way places which you can only discover if you make the effort to look.

[Slag_Bandoon]

Photographs taken from a non-playing angle?  Is there such a thing? You've never seen me play the game. :-/

[Jeff Mingay]

Good point, Slag!

One of the disappointing things about Jim Finegan's recent, and otherwise outstanding, history of Pine Valley is that there aren't more photos of the golf course from a variety of angles included in the book. All of the photos are taken into the greens from, basically, the centre of the fairways.

Now that I'm thinking about it, after reading Brad's post above, photos of golf holes from odd angles do indeed allow people to see features and detail that they otherwise miss.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Brad Klein,

The dolomites on the 4th hole at Somerset Hills don't fit in with the rest of the terrain that exists at Somerset, yet, they seem to be unobtrusive.

Do you feel this is due to their scale ?  Or is it some other reason ?

Is there any special history regarding the location of the 3rd green ?  And, the play over/into other holes on # 1 and # 9.

Do you feel that Somerset has escaped being called quirky because it is Tillinghast, despite the appearance of several quirky features throughout the golf course ?