Somewhat OT: How large is your golf photo album?

[Michael Huber]

Recently I've noted a large number of pictoral threads, hole by hole tours, etc. al.  and I have to say that it a good thing.  As a result, I took a look at my own photo album and it currently measures in at about 380 pictures from various courses in the past 4 or so years. 

How many golf photos do you have?

And as a follow up, is the number of golf photos larger or smaller than the number of photos of you and your significant other?

and since it is a thread about pictures, I figured I might as well a photo that I like from my album, the 15th hole at Nevillewood in Pittsburgh, PA:

[John Moore II]

Not sure how many pictures exactly, but from what I can remember, I have pictures from Pinehurst #7, Tot Hill Farm, Thanksgiving Point, Moose Run, NCSU Lonnie Poole, Mattaponi Springs, and Golden Horseshoe. Probably 35 pictures each. Certainly the courses that I have lined up to play potentially I will take some pictures.

[Pete_Pittock]

I just checked my computer, which has about 1450 photos. Probably 50 more in cameras. Biggest file is 182 of Old Macdonald, and I did not slow down play. Yesterday I was at a club with a camera and took just one picture, which was not of a golf hole or feature.
I probably have a 6"- 8" stack of photos which haven't been scanned. Oldest photo I remember off hand was me sitting on the fence at the 18th tee at Pebble Beach in 1970.

[Blair Mancini]

I have a small but growing number of pictures.  Since I purchased a digital camera (2 years ago...which means I'm stone-age certifiable), I've played about 10 courses that I wanted to record for posterity.  I would say I've taken an average of 20 pictures at each course.  Some more, some less.  But then again, I'm new to the interest of golf architecture.  I would like to know what the senior members of this board and those who have had a lifelong interest in the subject take pictures of when they get to a course.  Prettiest shot of each hole?  A down the line view from teebox to green?  Bunkers?  Water Hazards?

Thanks!

Blair

[Joe Bausch]

North of 10k now after about 3 years of carrying a camera.

[Sean_A]

When GCA.com goes under so will my photos.  I don't make any effort to save pix as about 99% are deleted off my computer and camera once the photos are posted.  I save the odd few for my PHOTO ALBUM - remember when people looked at photo albums?  I still do.  In any case, I only take photos for you wing nuts because as a wing nut myself, I hope to see your photos.  The photo tours loaded onto the Delicious website are approaching 550 - its a massive collection and one of the very best aspects of gca.com. 

Ciao  

[Martin Toal]

I have about 10k photos, of which about 5% are golf related.

Here is a random selection, which should include the 16th at The Green Monkey, Sandy Lane, Barbados, a par-3 with a green monkey in the right bunker, the 14th at Monte Rei, Portugal, a short par-4, the 18th at San Lorenzo, Portugal, another short par-4 around the marshes, and the 9th at Eldorado, Cabo a lovely hole along the beach. I understand this hole has been redesigned now, mores the pity.

[Tom Yost]

Just a gentle reminder to those with irreplaceable memories stored on your hard drive:

BACK UP THOSE FILES!!

Since suffering a loss years ago and more recently getting into digital photography with a rapidly growing collection of images, I have taken the following route for security:
- Dual data drives in a mirrored RAID configuration.
- Periodic backups on an external USB drive
- Backup photo shoots using two DVDs of different manufacturer.

Of course, everything is still on site so if my house burns down I'm screwed. 

[Andy Troeger]

Agree with Tom Y. wholeheartedly. My laptop was stolen about a month ago--I could replace the computer itself but not the photos. My newest idea is to put the photos and songs on an external memory card of some kind and to keep that somewhere away from my house. I had done that with CD's before for just photos, but the memory card would be easier to update.

Total photo collection has to be over 10k, but golf ones maybe are around 3-4k.

[Richard Hetzel]

Oh gosh, well over 5000 golf only pics, way more than me and my significant other. I almost never NOT take pics of a new course I am playing.

[Michael Huber]

North of 10k now after about 3 years of carrying a camera.

Joe,

I'd say you've been carrying the camera for more than three years.  In June 2007, I moved out to Philly, and by that time, your website already had a ton of courses on it.  Between your site, and Joe Logan's course reviews, I learned more than I could ever need to know about where to play and where not to play.  So I'd imagine your site has been around for sometime longer than that.

[Cliff Hamm]

Just a gentle reminder to those with irreplaceable memories stored on your hard drive:

BACK UP THOSE FILES!!

Since suffering a loss years ago and more recently getting into digital photography with a rapidly growing collection of images, I have taken the following route for security:
- Dual data drives in a mirrored RAID configuration.
- Periodic backups on an external USB drive
- Backup photo shoots using two DVDs of different manufacturer.

Of course, everything is still on site so if my house burns down I'm screwed. 

I recently began backing up to Mozy.  About $6 a month and it is on line so that if there is a fire, robbery, etc.  all files are still retrievable.

[Anthony Gray]

  I have a bunch of non digital pics.

  Anthony

[Tim Bert]

About a year ago when I got my new computer I had 5,000 golf pics and 7,000 to 8,000 other pics.

I have since visited a few more courses with a camera - Bandon again (Old Macdonald for the first time) and Chambers Bay being the ones that generated the most photos, so I probably have close to 6,000 now.

[Scott Warren]

Golf only, about 5000 I'd say. About 75 per course on average.

[Mike Hendren]

  I have a bunch of non digital pics.

  Anthony

It has been brought to my attention that Anthony Gray will soon start a thread ostensibly including photographs of yours truly.  I would like to go on record that I have never met the man.

Bogey

[Mike Nuzzo]

20,000 pictures of a little known course on the gulf coast of Texas
8,000 pictures from trolling through a golf forum website for 10 years which I pretty much stopped after seeing Frank Pont was doing it all for us...  http://www.golfarchitecturepictures.com/
and lots more from my personal travels
I think Picassa is great

[Stewart Abramson]

I started taking digital photos of golf courses about 4 or 5 years ago. I've posted about 3,300 pix of about 200 courses that I've played during that time frame at the following site: http://community.webshots.com/user/tewie19 .   Just added the Harvester in Rhodes, Iowa from a round I played this week.  I have also taken about ten pix of my wife during that time span.

[Tom_Doak]

I still have my collection of about 12,000 slides (of 500+ courses) in the back room at my office.  Digitizing all of them is just too daunting of a task, especially knowing how long it took to label them all and there is no way to do THAT automatically.

All of those were taken back in the days when it actually cost money to shoot each new picture.  The new era of photography just baffles me ... I think my daughters have more photos posted to Flickr than I took over 20+ years.

[Joe Bausch]

I still have my collection of about 12,000 slides (of 500+ courses) in the back room at my office.  Digitizing all of them is just too daunting of a task, especially knowing how long it took to label them all and there is no way to do THAT automatically.

When you no longer have room for them, I'll gladly receive them, digitize them, and share with the world.   

[Mike Nuzzo]

Tom
I encourage you to give Picassa a try
The mechanism to label a photo is fairly easy and it gets embedded in the digital file
Give 200 slides (after having a service scan the images) a try with your next intern - see how long it takes
Or give Joe a try
Golf club atlas can be your cloud computer that labels them automatically
I'll chip in to see all the pics
Cheers

[Blair Mancini]

Tom,

When you took all those pictures when you were in college and just starting, of what did you take pictures?  How did you photograph a course to take design principles from what's developed?

[Tom_Doak]

Blair:

When I started, I was trying to take pictures that would remind me of the holes and features I was seeing.

Then I got to know Brian Morgan, and he taught me a little bit about how to take pretty pictures.  He said it was clear I had no technical training, but that I had a great eye for composition [which I would guess has had more to do with my design success than anyone has noticed].  Anyway, I wound up being a pretty decent photographer for a while, to the point that I made a fair amount of money off these pictures in the 80's, just because I had been to a lot of courses that none of the pros [there were only five of them] had shot yet.

It is difficult to take pictures that really show depth and contour.  You have to do it at just the right time of day, and have to be a bit lucky with the lighting as well.  Even then, it's almost impossible to photograph greens, other than the photo might jog your memory of one.

I think that at this point, maybe the most interesting part of my collection is just to have a record of what all these great courses looked like 25-30 years ago.  Many of them have changed dramatically today ... and many of them may be headed back to the level of maintenance my photos recall ... which wouldn't be a bad thing at all, because they were all fun to play even back then.

Joe B:

You are always welcome to come to Traverse City and visit the vault if you have time.  (Summers are more fun.)  But I think you should see what you're getting into before I ship them all your way.

[Joshua Pettit]

I just checked my iPhoto library, and I'm up to 25,100 images, of which I estimate about 15,000 or so are golf related.  For some time now I've been meaning to better organize and label them, but even with them already being digital I'm dreading how much time it will take me.  I can't imagine trying to tackle a project like Tom's, but I'm a bit envious of the fact that he has them in a tangible format.  Digital photography is indeed an amazing wonder, but there's just something about the pre-digital era of photography that I find really intriguing.  Same thing with music, vinyl just can't be beat!

[Kevin Pallier]

Michael

I've only just finished the fun exercise of sorting through all my photo files on my USA sojourn last year. It took me over 6months and now I have around 2,500 photos sorted into around 50 folders.