Frank Pont's golfarchitecturepictures.com

[Michael Dugger]

I see he has made an update, as stated, including Barnbougle, Kidnappers, Melbourne, St. Andrews Beach, Yarra Yarra, The Dunes, Old Course & Carnoustie.

I am very much looking forward to how this website develops!!!!

Look at some of this stuff!!!!

[Garland Bayley]

Thanks Michael,

I didn't have luck viewing his site before. Perhaps some combination of Linux/Mozilla problems. I will have to try again.

[Michael Dugger]

How great is this hole???

[Chris Kane]

Its not bad.  The next hole is better.

[ed_getka]

bump

[Tom_Doak]

As I am sure Frank would be happy to credit, the source of many of his pictures (including all of those above) is our former intern and shaper Chris Hunt.  

Chris is now in grad school pursuing a real job, and donated his entire collection of millions of pictures to Frank's library.  He worked on the shaping at Cape Kidnappers (and at Tumble Creek and Sebonack) and joined our whirlwind two-week journey to NZ and Oz at the end of 2004.  St. Andrews Beach looks much more mature today.

[Frank Pont]

Tom, you're very right, Chris (we were class mates in Edinburgh) contributed a large amount of pictures of golf courses around the globe. Virtually all pics on the site are either his or mine.

I wish more people would make the effort to contribute their pics. For one I would love to have good pics of all the courses of architects such as yourself, Coore/Crenshaw, Hanse, DeVries, Engh, Dye, etc etc.

Any chance Tom, you can get one of your associates to burn a compilation DVD and mail it?

[Ulrich Mayring]

I wish more people would make the effort to contribute their pics.

Well, what is the goal of the site? And why are so many pictures per course?

Ulrich

[Tom_Doak]

Frank:

Larry Lambrecht has been around to take pictures of all our courses, but I can't give you his stuff for free.

If you were able to process slides, though, I've got about 20,000 slides of 700 different courses in a file cabinet in my office.

[Frank Pont]

Ulrich,

answers to your questions taken directly from the site:

Golf Architecture Pictures .com is about showing a large selection of pictures of different golf courses around the world. The emphasis will not be on showing the best quality pictures, but rather on showing many details of holes, greens, tees, bunkers, water hazards of golf courses. The idea of the site was born when Dutch golf course architect Frank Pont decided to put his large collection of golf course pictures online, so that others would also be able to benefit from accessing and using these pictures.

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. 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.

[Frank Pont]

Tom,

fully understand you can't give Larry's pics to the site. Anyway his focus is more on making a few very beautiful pictures, the sites focus is more on making many pictures of all the intersting architectural elements of the golf course.

Thanks for your kind offer to process your slides, but unfortunately that won't work for me from a logistical and timing point of view   . But seriously, what a pitty you only have your pictures in analogue, have you ever thought of converting them into digital before they go bad?

Interesting about the numbersyou mentioned: I just counted the pics up to now that will be going on the site: 70,000 of 500 courses...

[Tom_Doak]

Frank:

As I often pointed out to Chris, back in the day when you had to pay for film and processing, one was a little more circumspect in pressing the shutter button again!

I do have a slide scanner but I have had little time to think about mastering the settings for converting them to digital.  Perhaps if we get an intern this year with some real Photoshop skills, I will make them worth their while in the office!  In the meantime, even after 20 years, the Kodachrome is still going strong ... I was well advised on what film to use for archival purposes.

[Ryan Farrow]

Tom, if you are talking about changing picture sizes for thousands of photos there is an automated program in CS2 that will convert every file in a folder to a specific resolution and in various formats like jpgs or tiffs.

[Mike Nuzzo]

Ryan,
Tom is referring to the manpower to get the slides out of storage, place them in the scanner, make sure the settings are appropriate (no small task with thousands of images), then process and digitally archive, then color correct in photoshop if necessary.

Tom,
I think you and your interns would be better served by using a high end service, it would be much cheaper - I'll guess $.25 - .40 each for an 8 meg file - with those quantities.

P.S.
A cannon elph takes suprisingly good pictures on low resolution settings - a meg a picture from a small 7 megapixl camera - my camera can hold 2,000 images.

Cheers

[Frank Pont]

Tom,

I agree when you are looking for pictures as art that "less is more". I remember reading about a famous photographer who for a period of a month forced himself to take just one picture a day, which then surprisingly often happened to be brilliant....

However Chris and I were/are just making sure everything visually interesting on the course is covered in case you ever want to look it up.

On your slides, if you do ever get them converted (which you really should), I would still love to post them on GAP, especially the older pictures of historical courses. That should be interesting to compare to some of the courses nowadays.

On another note, I'm surprised your associates in the field don't use digital cameras more, I would think there would be benefit in having a lot of digital pics of all the courses you've worked on in various stages of the building/grow in/first years.

Finally I am disappointed that no other golf architects on GCA sofar have come forward to donate their digital picture libraries to GAP. Is there a reason for this (other than pure inertia) that I am missing?

[Ulrich Mayring]

Frank,

I'm not an architect, but have some pictures. However, I also subscribe to the "less is more" idea and so cannot meet the site's goals. Perhaps that is the point for others as well, they simply don't have that many pictures per course and look for aesthetics more than documentation.

It's a great site for research purposes, because it aims for correctness and completeness. But it's less ideal for capturing the soul of a course. It is too repetetive for browsing to get a quick idea of a course's character.

Ulrich

[John Foley]

Frank,

I love the site & love the qty of pics per course.

One comment would better a little more detail as to the pic we are looking at would be great.

[Tom_Doak]

John:

You have hit the nail on the head there ... the most time-consuming part of the whole deal is labeling all the photos you've taken, whether on the slides or on your computer.

[Dan Moore]

Frank,

I'm not an architect, but have some pictures. However, I also subscribe to the "less is more" idea and so cannot meet the site's goals. Perhaps that is the point for others as well, they simply don't have that many pictures per course and look for aesthetics more than documentation.

It's a great site for research purposes, because it aims for correctness and completeness. But it's less ideal for capturing the soul of a course. It is too repetetive for browsing to get a quick idea of a course's character.

Ulrich

I agree with you, but there is a work around.  I have taken a course I know such as County Down or Portrush and downloaded 3-4 pics per hole in order and labeled them.  That way I have a reasonably complete course tour that can be viewed shot by shot, hole by hole.  This too is time consuming and requires some knowledge of the course to be sure you've got it right.  

[Yannick Pilon]

Frank,

Let me know what is the best way to send you some pictures.  Send me an e-mail if you don't want your coordinates printed here.

In the past 18 months, I have visited close to 20 of the top courses in the world, mainly in Scotland, USA and Canada.  I  try to take pictures of them in a way that appears to be similar to your approach.  I usually try to get many pictures of the same hole from different areas (tees, fairways & greens) and most of the major features as well.

Let me know if I can be of assistance.  It would be great to know that others could appreciate and study those pictures as much as I do!

YP

[Frank Pont]

Yannick,

Great to hear you want to contribute!

To get stuff to me follow the instructions on the website page: www.golfarchitecturepictures.com/Pages/contact.html

In short: either send it to me by mail on a CD/DVD or e-mail it to me in a zipped file via a service such as www.YouSendIt.com

Email/call me if you have any questions.

[Jeff_Mingay]

I've already corresponded with Frank about my intention to contribute. Not only with photos I already have, but also with new efforts to photog courses throughout the world (with emphasis on Canada).

I think Frank's web site is a great idea, and an excellent resource as is. It will continue to get better and better, especially if others - like Yannick - are willing, and make efforts to also contribute.

[Frank Pont]

Finally finished putting the 82 US courses that Chris Hunt contributed on the website in the new format; enjoy!

[wsmorrison]

Frank,

Excellent collection of pictures.  Thank you for the effort.

However, when I checked under Pennsylvania and looked at Merion East, the photos were of Cherry Hills CC.  When I looked at Merion West, they were of Riverdale.  

[Frank Pont]

Thanks for the Quality Control! just corrected it....
Mail me with any other mistakes you find.