Flag football practice, Cedar Creek, Texas.
A nice example of what happens when you get some pretty light and come prepared. I’d also point to this photo, taken in the middle of a dusty, dry field in the middle of nowhere, Texas, at 10 on a Saturday morning at a practice for a club-level independent kids’ flag football team as a good contrary example for those budding sports photographers who insist that you need to shoot big-time pro or college events to make a portfolio-worthy photograph.

Mike Danton
Sports Illustrated sent me to Halifax, Nova Scotia to spend a little time with Mike Danton–former Canadian junior hockey star, NHL player with the St. Louis Blues, and… former federal prison inmate. After turning his life around, the 30-year old enrolled at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, where he now plays collegiate hockey. The assignment comprised a mix of game action, documentary reportage, and portrait work over the course of three days, but this is my favorite image from the shoot.

Yani Tseng, 2011 Kraft Nabisco Championship
I wrote a little blog post about this here, but just to reiterate: For about 45 minutes in the morning, as the early groups tee off in the first and second rounds of the Kraft-Nabisco Chapmionshiph, you’ll not find better light anywhere in golf than on the second tee tee box of the Dinah Shore course at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California. Fortunately for me, the pairing and times worked out so that world #1 Yani Tseng came through as the rising sun peered above the trees in the distance, and piped its light straight up the fairway.

Richard Helmstetter
Shot for Sports Illustrated as part of a six-portrait series on innovators in the golf equipment industry. Richard Helmstetter was the creative force behind the Big Bertha, and with it, helped usher in the age of the driver-as-status-symbol and marketing breakthrough–in addition to the more tangible innovations like a bore-through hosel and oversized clubhead. I photographed him at Callaway’s testing facility in Carlsbad, California.

Nelson Cruz, 2011 American League Championship Series
“Chance favors the prepared mind,” Louis Pasteur once said. It also favors the photographer who happens to be in an outside-third base photo well when a right-handed hitting Nelson Cruz walks up to the plate in the tenth inning with the bases loaded in Game 2 of the American League Championship series and delivers a game winning, walk-off, grand slam home run–especially when that photographer makes the decision to put down the 400 mm and shoot loose instead because, well, something exuberant might happen.

Harrison Frazar
PGA Tour golfer Harrison Frazar is one of those middle-of-the-pack guys; never really at the top of the leaderboard but making just enough money every year to give in to the temptation of hanging around on tour. Having gone over a decade without a tournament win, frustrated with his game and sidelined by injuries and painful rehabilitation, he was contemplating retirement when I got to spend a day with him and his family on assignment for Sports Illustrated. One of the most accommodating athletes I’ve ever met, he was generous enough to let me in behind the scenes of everyday life in the Frazar household on a cold February day in Dallas. Later on in June of 2011, he won a tournament in Memphis for a late kick start to his career. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Webb and Dowd Simpson
Golf World magazine sent me to Charlotte to shoot a cover and opener for a feature on Webb Simpson, arguably the best American golfer last season. In addition to portraits of Webb himself, they wanted a shot of him and his wife as well. After trying a few lit portraits, I placed them in front of a window in the grill room at Quail Hollow’s clubhouse. Of late, I’ve early come to appreciate the spontaneity that natural light allows for; usually if you just step back and let your subjects be themselves, without the formality of strobes popping and assistants running everywhere, and focus on your composition and timing, things fall into place.

Hyperwear Ad Campaign
An advertising campaign for a fitness equipment company in Austin, and a shoot that worked pretty much like most of my editorial shoots: A minimum of scouting, art direction and lighting on the fly, adapting to fluid situations, and working within the constraints of a limited location and a tight budget, all while trying to remain relatively unobtrusive and not get in the way of the location’s business or clients. Well, thats the kind of thing I’m used to doing, and that’s the way I’m used to working. My crew (of two) and I set this particular multiple-light shot (1 of 7 different ones we did we did that day, with 5 different models) up in about 15 minutes.

Jack Burke and Dan Jenkins, photographed for Golf World
Jack Burke, the 1956 Masters Champion, is one of my all-time favorite portrait subjects. I’ve photographed him enough times to know that he keeps a leather-bound journal with him, into which he transcribes just about any random thought about golf that comes into his head. It was the basis for a book several years ago, and you can get a good idea for what’s inside of it by just hanging around him for an hour or so; you’re bound to be the recipient of an aphorism or two.

Legendary sportswriter Dan Jenkins, on the other hand, was a bit more intimidating. Even though he and I had worked for the same magazine (Golf Digest) for over a decade, we’d never really met. And I was even more nervous about springing an idea I had for the shoot on him at the last minute–namely, a prop of some Chinese food to make light of a situation he’d gotten himself into with an ill-chosen turn of phrase on his twitter stream last year. He’d got a kick out of the idea, though, and played along to perfection.

Jonathan Byrd, 2011 Deutsche Bank Championship
I’ve written before about how much I like to use mirror lenses on a limited basis, and how to take advantage of the very specific criteria that must be met in order to use them to their full effect. It just so happens that TPC Boston, home of the PGA Tour’s Deutsche Bank Championship, has three out of maybe five or six holes on the entire tour where using such a lens can produce the desired results and give quite a different look from that of a standard telephoto lens. One of those holes is the 17th, where I photographed Jonathan Byrd on the tee in some nice morning backlight.

Ben Crane
A Sports Illustrated feature assignment on a normally low-key golfer who for some odd reason has decided to invent a zany You-Tube persona (the red neoprene suit and crash helmet being the trademarks of that alter-ego), and who also happens to be consistently horrible when it comes to playing the British Open. I hadn’t spoken to him before the shoot, and I was a little nervous about whether or not he’d want to poke so much fun at himself. When he answered the door and asked a) if I’d managed to find a kilt and b) if I wouldn’t mind waiting a second while he went to the locker room to fetch his pink shoes and socks, I knew we’d be having a little fun with things.

We take comfort in our rituals, and for someone who travels as much as I do coming back to a familiar place the same time every year has a certain enveloping warmth to it. That I’ve covered this event more than any other (and consecutively, at that) makes this the most ritualistic of all my travels. When I was a kid, Labor Day always meant the end of summer, that last weekend at the beach before school started, with fall poised to arrive not long after that. Now Labor Day means a weekend of walking through the streets of downtown Providence every evening, taking in the crisp New England air that has a tinge of autumn in it already–a couple of days ahead of where I grew up down on Long Island, and weeks, if not months, before I’ll sniff that unexpected, welcome scent of fall down in Texas.

This one’s for everyone who wonders what really goes into making a golf picture “work.” The thinking often goes, they’re playing the same course for four days; by Sunday you ought to have things dialed in to perfection, right? Well, sometimes the reality is that there are a lot of factors that go into a picture working or not, and as a result you may only have one shot at something. So when you see it, you’d better make the most of it.

Here you have the same golfer, on the same tee, at the same time of day–that would be Stacy Lewis, on the eighth tee, at about 3 in the afternoon. The only differences are the day of the week and the weather: The top picture was shot on Saturday, with high overcast clouds; the lower picture was shot on Sunday, with clear blue skies. Each one was shot with the exact same lens on the exact same camera (a Canon 5D Mark II with a 70-200mm f4.) Exposures were correct for her face. An no, for you cynics out there, there’s no magic graduated filter (digital or otherwise) applied. Notice how everything in the first shot comes together — the background is identifiable (and scenic), and it provides a sense of place; the flowers give a nice foreground element and a touch of color (as does her turquoise shirt), and the clouds create a diffuse light that removes any harsh shadows and evens out the exposure between her face and the mountainside and what bits of blue sky there are. Not only that, but the location of the tee markers placed her on the left side of the frame, facing into what could easily be a two-page spread. I remember thinking to myself, “I’ve got to do this again tomorrow.”

Well, I did. Only this time there were no clouds, so opening up to expose for her face in the harsh desert sun blew out the sky and the mountains completely. It also washed out the flowers; her gray shirt didn’t help to make things any more colorful, and what’s more, the position of the tee markers placed her to the right of the frame (that is, if you wanted to retain a composition with the mountains and flowers in it), making for an awkward spread, at best.

The moral of our story? Yes, when you’re covering pro golf, the pictures from the last day are the ones that really matter, and you always want to shoot what you think are the best angles then. But don’t let that stop you from shooting them earlier in the week, as well–because you just never know if you’ll get the same opportunity, or see the same picture, again.

I’m not normally one to park myself on a tee box for an extended period of time but there are a few exceptions to this rule. The second hole of the Dinah Shore Course at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, home of the what-used-to-be-called-the-Dinah-Shore-and-is-now-called-the-Kraft-Nabisco-and-next-year-will-be-called-something-else Championship is one of those places.

For about 45 minutes in the morning, from about 7:50 until 8:35 or so, you’ll have a hard time finding a better tee box anywhere. The sun is still low enough to get under visors and provide catch lights in eyes, and off to the side just enough to add shadow and modeling to faces. Add to that a clump of trees slightly behind the tee box at camera right which keeps the gallery behind the golfers in the shade, and another grove of tall trees about 200 yards behind the tee box for a backdrop.  The 45-minute window provides just enough time for 4 or 5 groups to roll through before the sun gets too high and the gorgeous light goes away, and with the first tee time at 7:00 a.m., that means that the “meat of the order” of the morning pairings gets there just in time. This morning we had Morgan Pressel, Sandra Gal, Cristie Kerr, and Yani Tseng (above); tomorrow we’ll get Paula Creamer, Michelle Wie, and Suzanne Pettersen, among others, coming through just as the light gets good.

We’re usually not so fortunate. The past couple of years the pairings gods have been against us, with the marquee groups starting on the back nine on Thursday morning and the front on Thursday afternoon (thus guaranteeing they’ll start on the back on Friday morning). This year, it’s all coming together.

For the photographically curious: No, it’s not cropped. It’s not even photoshopped, save for pulling the contrast down by about 5 points, and converting the raw file to a jpeg, in Lightroom. Otherwise, this is straight out of the camera, shot on a Canon Mark IV with a 400mm 2.8 LII lens, lying on the ground with a Canon Angle Finder C attached. It’s that last part that helps clean up the background, using the tops of some blades of grass in the foreground to give it that graduated haze effect at the bottom of the frame.

That would be from room 235 of the London Marriott County Hall. I plan on requesting it from here on in.

It’s a tradition I have after every British open; treating myself to a day’s stopover in London. Nothing to do, no one to see, no pressure–just leave the equipment cases in storage at Heathrow, hop on the train, and be back in London in time for a little nap and a wander into Soho for some dinner. Maybe a little sightseeing the next day, a trip to Jermyn Street for a couple of shirts at Harvie & Hudson (my favorite), and of course a stop to load up on (literally) pounds of Cadbury Dairy Milks, Wispas, and Nestle Aeros to smuggle back across the pond.

And of course there’s The Run. My favorite in the world, and not to be missed. Forget the double-decker bus tours; here is my way of seeing the sights in London: Leave the County Hall at 5:30 a.m. just as the sun is starting to glint off of Big Ben. Cross Westminster Bridge, hang a right on the embankment, and run up Northumberland Street to Trafalgar Square. Head up the Mall, with Buckingham Palace right in front in the distance, and continue all the way to Wellington Arch and Hyde Park Corner. At 1.6 miles, a round trip from there is a nice little 5K; or if I’m feeling up to it, Hyde Park beckons for as much as I feel like. And then back down the Mall, over the Jubilee Bridge, and, again depending on what distance I feel like doing, either turn left and head for Tower Bridge, or turn right and slip past the Eye–either way I’ll wind up at the Starbucks just past the hotel for a much needed cool-down cup of coffee.

It’s a great way to unwind from a week of craziness, and a tradition I hope to continue for a long time to come.

Going on no sleep is not good; doing it for five straight days is a bit insane. Look, I’m not complaining and please don’t take it that way. But the next time someone tells me that they’d love to have my job I’d like them to consider this: Since getting off of an overnight flight (that was the last of four starting at 6 a.m. Tuesday) on Wednesday morning, I’ve gotten no more than 3 1/2 hours of sleep a night, left the house at 6:30 or earlier every day, and been at the golf course until at least 10 each night. Dinner has never been eaten before 10:30 p.m., and I will have completed no less than seven full circuits of the Old Course in a four-day span–half of them in the pouring rain. This is hard, tiring work, fun as it may be.

Of course I wouldn’t trade it for the world, though. And now the St. Andrews Starbucks beckons one more time, as does a nice long nap in London this afternoon!

No pressure, right?

I’ve written more about my work with the device–in fact, I’ve devoted an entire section of this site–here if you’re interested. But for the purposes of this week’s project, it entailed getting access to a balcony that overlooks the 18th hole at the MacDonald Rusacks Hotel, setting up the system (A Gigapan Epic Pro unit, Canon EOS 7D, and EF 70-200mm f4 lens), and letting it run while I left to photograph the champion arriving at the 18th green.

In addition to being an amazing hotel steeped in the tradition, lore, and personality of the town of St. Andrews (and one I’d highly recommend looking into if you ever need a place to stay while there), the staff at the Rusacks is top-notch. I’d contacted hotel’s general manager a couple of months earlier, and then, once on site, met with its sales and marketing director, and they could not have been more helpful or professional. I explained that I needed to clamp a camera rig to a balcony railing, and that I, or someone helping me, would need to access the balcony intermittently, all on what is probably the noisiest, most hectic day they’ll ever see.

That's the Gigapan unit with camera and lens attached, in operation (it's next to my backup, single-frame remote, mounted just in case). If you look closely, you can also find Christian on the balcony, third head from the left.

They gave their blessing, and at 7 a.m. on Sunday, so as to stay out of the way of the staff and guests, I began setting up the system and shooting test shots. The entire image comprises 512 frames, shot across 32 columns and sixteen rows, with an elapsed time of approximately 30 minutes. When the leaders were on about the 13th hole on Sunday afternoon, I made my way up to the balcony, double-checked the positioning and setup of the unit, and started it on its way. I then left for my predetermined spot at the back of the 18th green (if you look carefully you can spot me in the gigapan image–I’m wearing a blue and black jacket and looking at the back of my camera) to cover the winning putt. In order to get the timing right, Christian positioned himself out of the way on the balcony in the afternoon during the final shot and paused and re-started the unit to ensure that the players were on the green at the appropriate time during the shot. As I told him later, he nailed the timing, even getting it so that the flagstick was still in the hole.

All in all, I’d call it a successful shot. Feel free to linger and browse around a little!

Years ago I thought that was a very altruistic approach. I mean, we should all have the opportunity, at least once per tournament, to walk eighteen holes with the greatest golfer who ever lived, right?

Only lately have I come to realize that it’s not that at all, and that the situation needs to be turned on its head. The reason we all get Tiger at least once isn’t because it’s good for the person who’s covering him–it’s to give the other guys a break. Forget sharing the wealth. It’s only fair to spread the hell around a little.

Fair to spread the hell of massive, crushing galleries, of being cursed at, spit on, pushed, and pulled by spectators who, unlike those who comprise your typically knowledgable, “normal” Open galleries, apparently have very little regard for the game or its traditions (to say nothing of us photographers, but that’s neither here nor there). Of having the rules for coverage changed on us at the last second without warning–of being able to sit in a particular spot all day long, only to be told two minutes before His Greatness appears that we can’t be there. Of goon-squad security guards and uniformed police officers packing pistols in the middle of the fairway. Of the need to operate with an even more heightened sense of awareness that even the slightest misstep could cost you a tongue-lashing from The Man himself or, worse yet, his caddie, even if the real culprit was the guy next to you with his Rebel XT who can’t figure out how to turn off the autofocus beep. Following Tiger is about as stressful an assignment as one can have on the golf course. And today was my day.

Well, tomorrow’s Sunday. The really important one. And I have a special little project to work on that you’ll hear all about later…

We had all, of course, planned ahead, and I took up a position in a photo tower overlooking the 17th green, for a wide shot of the bridge, the town, and the R&A clubhouse. I got there early, figuring it would be packed. It wasn’t. My good friend Fred Vuich had gotten there before me, and for the next hour or so we waited, freezing our asses off and trying to talk to each other above a howling wind. Thanks to the weather delay earlier, it was 9:45 p.m. and barely bright enough to see–let alone shoot–by the time Tom crossed the bridge. In a stroke of good fortune, I managed to catch a few strobes from the photographers who were lined up in front of the bridge for the occasion.

On a related weather note, can we talk about something else? It rained today.

Let me amend that: It rained sideways today.

It was, in short, typical Scottish golf weather. Cold and chilly in the morning, with a little mist that gave way to intermittent showers, and then all hell broke loose. The wind kicked up and a cold, driving rain, its heavy drops pushed sideways by the gusts, hammered the course. And then, the sun popped out, for a little while anyways, until the clouds rolled back in. And then, as the evening arrived, the sun broke through the clouds one last time, bathing the 18th hole in a glorious, golden light.

It was the kind of day when you had no choice but to leave the rain gear on all day, because you just never knew. Okay, here comes the shameless plug: Thank heaven for Think Tank rain covers.

Here’s what I love about these things: You can leave them on all day. They go on in a second without having to disconnect the lens from the body, sure, but here’s the problem with that: In Scotland, you may not have a second. And today we didn’t. Once the covers are on, its just as easy to shoot with them as if they were off. The peace of mind that that offers (not to mention the ability to not miss a shot as you scramble to find shelter to put covers on, as was the case in the past) cannot be underestimated.

I remember a few years ago, shooting the British Open at Hoylake, we had a similar day. I was very excited to test out a new cover for my 400 f 2.8 that Think Tank had sent me to evaluate. It rained sideways that day, too, and while the covers repelled everything, I noticed a few flaws. That night I e-mailed Mike Sturm and Doug Murdoch at Think Tank, and told them what I thought. The cover was fantastic, I said. But it needed a flap to cover the eyepiece, and they needed to work on some kind of cap for the front of the lens, too.

Now, I’m sure I couldn’t have been the only one who noticed this. But a week later, a package arrived at my door. Mike had sent along a cap he’d devised, and asked me to give it a go. Fast forward a year or so. the Think Tank Hydrophobia for the 70-200 comes out–with an integrated eyepiece flap and a drop-away cover for the front element. These guys listen. they implement. And it shows in their finished product. When I took my 70-200 cover out of the box earlier this year, I e-mailed Mike and told him that, just after looking at it and not even testing it, I think he may have just created the perfect camera rain cover. This week, the true test occurred. In two days of hard rain so far, I’ve had zero equipment failures. None.

In fact, I haven’t even been worried. That’s how confident I am in their stuff.

Every. Single. Time.

It seems oh-so-important on the Thursday of any major, but especially this one: the Open Championship at the Home of Golf, the historic implications of what might happen in four days’ time banging around in my head about as loudly as the alarm clock that just informed me it’s either 5 a.m. in Scotland or, according to my head, midnight back home. I haul my jet-lagged rear end out of bed, discover, to my dismay, that there’s no coffee maker (let alone coffee) in our rental house, and yet still manage to navigate the winding road from Cupar to St. Andrews in time. My brain is already fried not only by the time difference but then, too, by a sunrise that seems to have occurred at three in the morning. But whatever fog I’m in, I tell myself that I have to be there. Because whatever might happen this week, it all starts today.

I have to get the “First ball.”

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Nobody’s told me I have to do it. Nobody’s expecting it. Hell, I don’t even really want to do it, but there’s something nagging in my head that makes me feel the need to go, to stand out on the golf course with a bunch of other brave souls in the bleakest hours of the morning, and make sure I get a picture of a guy hitting a tee shot. One that looks just like any other tee shot. Without a caption to tell you, you’d never know the difference. Hell, if it weren’t for the fact that this was the very first shot of this year’s Open, this picture probably wouldn’t make it past my first edit. Call it a work ethic if you want. Call it guilt. Mix the two together and call me a Calvinist. Or just call me stupid.

You see, it happens every time. When it’s hit, that first ball seems like it’s the most critical shot of the tournament, a piece of living history. There won’t ever be another one. And for my part, it proves to me that I was there. I wasn’t late. I didn’t miss it. I feel good about myself.

And then, about an hour later, I start running into people I know in the press room. They haven’t unpacked yet, but they see me all ready and raring to go. Cameras out, rain pants on, wide awake and alert from the five or six cups of coffee I’ve already downed. “Man, you’re here early,” they’ll say. Or offer some variation thereof.

“Had to get the first ball,” I say.

“Really? Why?”

It’s at that moment that I realize that that’s a damned good question.