Not every photo taken on a golf course needs to be a work of art. Some of my favorite photos from Bandon Dunes are the post-round selfies (usies). Of course, there’s a lower bar for that kind of thing and, if I’m honest, I probably gravitate to the group shots because most of my photos of the golf courses themselves just aren’t that great.
Exhibit A.
This is a photo of a golf hole. Maybe at Bandon Trails. It’s so uninteresting I wouldn’t hang it on the wall in a windowless basement bathroom.
Why am I so bad at this?
I like to think I’m pretty good with a camera. I create many of the equipment photos featured in stories on MyGolfSpy. Over the years, I’ve developed my own style and while I’m not sure what kind of quality metric it really is, my work is good enough that it has been pilfered more than a few times.
Yeah, I see you. Sonsofbitches.
At a minimum, as a photographer, I am not completely inept.
But get me out on a golf course … it doesn’t matter if it’s with a phone or with my real camera, most of my photos are objectively trash.
They’re not wall-worthy.
What do you do when your photos need work but you want something to hang on your wall?
Buying a print from the bucket list course you just played is always an option. They’re generally spectacular. They’re the reason why professional photographers like Evan Schiller and Patrick Koenig earn their livings taking pictures of golf courses.
But what if you want to frame your memory?
How can you transform your photos from ill-conceived snapshots to something you can hang on your wall and pass off as not just art, but your art?
Let’s talk to the experts
Fortunately, one of the perks of this job is that it gives me just enough juice than I can reach out to world-class golf photographers like Evan Schiller and Patrick Koenig and persuade them to share some of the tricks of their trade to help all of us shoot better golf course photos.
As it turns out, the basics of golf course photgraphy are pretty straightforward. They’re the same ingredients that generally make for good photo of most anything else.
Taking good golf course photos comes down to two things: light and composition. “If you get those two right,” says Koenig, “you can create some pretty great imagery.”
Light
Let’s start with the unfortunate part first. As important as lighting is to making a great photograph, on the golf course, just like my first tee shot (and the two after that), it’s the thing you’ll have the least control over.
Professional photographers have the luxury of scouting holes in advance. Almost everything Schiller does is planned, right down to the app he uses to help determine the perfect time and angle to shoot any given hole The timing and details, sometimes to the level of flagstick placement, are coordinated with golf course staff in advance.
The photos themselves are often shot during golden hour – the first hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset – when lighting is ideal.
The rest of us are largely at the mercy of our tee time which means we’re often on the course when the light is suboptimal. Clouds can be your friends as overcast days soften the light and big fluffy clouds can block the harshest midday light while making the sky in your background a bit more interesting.
Shoot early in the morning or closer to sunset if you can but, ultimately, you’ll have to make the most of what the day gives you.
Composition
You are responsible for everything in that frame. Make it interesting.
Good composition starts with picking a subject and your best shots will come when that subject is something a bit more specific than “golf hole.”
“I always start with something that I find interesting or unique,” says Koenig. That can be a bunker or a bridge or anything else that catches your eye. There aren’t any wrong answers, or maybe just a few wrong answers, but the next part is key.
Koenig’s approach is to search for ways to apply a good backdrop and foreground.
It sounds simple, and it kind of is, but speaking from experience, it’s also where many of us go wrong.
With that in mind, here are a few specific tips from the pros to help you nail the composition of your golf course photos.
Train your eyes
How many times have you shot a photo only to discover that what the camera captured is nothing like how you remember it?
“Your eyes see different from a camera,” says Schiller. And since the camera is what it is, you’ll need to learn to see how it sees. “People just generally look at the middle of the frame.”
If you can train yourself to be more aware of the entire frame, you’ll be more likely to end up with an image that more closely resembles what you remember. At minimum, it should help to keep you from cutting everyone’s legs off at the shins the next time you shoot a group shot.
Get out of the fairway
As golfers, we want to be in the fairway. That’s ideal golf but the mindset of photographing the hole like we play it is where a lot goes wrong when it comes to DIY golf course photography.
We neglect the foreground.
What does that mean?
When we forget to include foreground elements, we’re often left with an overpowering sea of fairway that eventually flows to something a bit more interesting, usually the green complex. It’s how we see the course but it doesn’t make for a particularly interesting photo.
See below.
This photo has everything. Well, mostly it just has grass. Meh. At least I managed to keep my shadow out of the shot.
Compare that to how professionals shoot a hole. You’ll rarely find my signature “straight up the fairway” image (often with my shadow visible in the frame) in their portfolios and, when you do, the fairway will invariably be framed by something else to capture your interest.
For lack of a better description, look for something that visually cuts the grass. It can be as simple as a patch of wispy heather. Walk up to a bunker, find a creek or a bridge or even use the line formed by the transition from fairway to rough. When it’s your only option, crop your photos to remove the uninteresting parts.
When you put something interesting in the foreground, it changes the entire dynamic of the photo.
-Evan SchillerThe few decent course photos I’ve taken are the ones where I’ve accidentally included something in the foreground.
Foreground elements create depth and finding them often requires shooting from a different perspective than you get from just playing the hole.
Flow to the corners
Flowing to the corners builds on the idea of using “leading lines.” It’s part of the style that Schiller has developed throughout his career as a golf course photographer.
Look at enough of Schiller’s photos and you’ll begin to recognize the subtle magic of having both the natural and man-made lines of a golf course – things like cart paths, long bunkers, fences and the divide between rough and fairway or sea and land – flow to the corners and edges of the frame.
Elevation is your friend
Chances are you’re not going to be shooting with a drone but you should still look for opportunities to use elevation to raise the quality of your photos.
Apologies for the questionable pun but, let’s be real, those flat fairway shots we talked about earlier are boring AF.
Instead, look for a high point on a hole or shoot downhill from the tee box. Stand on the back of a cart. Even just a couple of extra feet can help to add interest to your photos.
It works the other way, too.
Shooting uphill towards an elevated green or tee box or crouching down to bring some foreground elements into the frame can work just as well.
Don’t go too wide
The idea of not going too wide applies to both the lens you use and the aperture setting on your camera.
Golf course photography is landscape photography so you might think you need a wide angle lens. While a wide angle is likely a part of every golf course photographer’s kit (Schiller’s arsenal includes a 16-35mm zoom and a 24mm prime lens), they’re rarely the first-choice options. He uses them when the shot he needs leaves no other option. Instead, he relies heavily on his 50mm and 85mm options. The go-to for Patrick Koenig is an incredibly versatile 70-200mm f/2.8. It’s a popular lens with portrait, event and sports photographers but it’s not the first lens you’d think of for a landscape photographer.
You’ll also want to avoid shooting at a wide aperture.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, aperture refers to how much light a lens lets in. It’s a little convoluted but the wider the aperture, the lower f number. The lower the f number, the more light your lens lets in. More light creates a shallower depth of field which means less of your photo will be in focus.
That feels more convoluted than it should be.
Anyway …
While there are situations when you’ll want to intentionally blur some foreground elements, with golf course and landscape photography in general, you want most or all of the frame in focus.
Giving some context to the numbers, Schiller shoots many of his photos a f/19 and f/22 and seldom goes lower than f/9 to get everything in focus.
The main camera on my iPhone 15 has a native aperture of just f/1.8 but we’ll get to that shortly.
When it comes to composition, perhaps the best takeaway is the advice another photographer gave Evan Schiller early in his career.
“You are responsible for everything in that frame. Make it interesting.”
Your phone versus a real camera
That said, it shouldn’t come as any real surprise that, as a photography tool, it’s far less capable than a modern mirrorless camera.
The guys at Petapixel made this video explaining many of the differences and the limitations of mobile phones as cameras so I won’t go too deep into the specifics here. The bulk what matters comes down to two things.
Sensors
The sensors on your phone are going to be significantly smaller than what you’ll find in a mirrorless or DSLR camera. With that, you’re going to get less dynamic range (the ratio between the darkest and lightest parts of the image). There are software tricks phones use to compensate for this but there are trade-offs that come with that.
I should mention that while the main camera on my phone offers a physically small but beefy 48-megapixel sensor, the other two cameras – the .5 and the 5x – are only 12 megapixels each. That’s less than what many DSLRs offered a decade ago.
Lenses
Phone lenses are absolute engineering marvels but their compact size means designers have to forgo many of the features found their larger counterparts. Phone lenses are limited in their ability to control coma, chromatic aberration, and correct for distortion. A quality lens on a real camera will do a much better job of resolving the finer details you’re trying to capture.
It’s also true that unless you add one of those kits that allow you to put a lens over your phone’s native lens, your focal length options are limited to what comes with the phone.
Finally, as I mentioned, professional golf course photographers often shoot at f/9 and above. The native aperture of the main camera lens on my phone is just f/1.8.
A brief word about drones
You may have noticed that an increasing amount of golf course photography is being done with drones. With that, you might be tempted to bring a drone with you on your next round of golf. If you’re going to do that, be aware that there are likely liability issues, so be sure to get permission from the golf course before taking flight.Pro Tip
With the disclaimer out of the way, our Pro Tip for using drones is a simple reminder that you don’t need to get too high. Shooting from just a bit higher up than you can get on your own often creates a stunning perspective.How to get the most out of your phone’s camera
If you’re serious about golf course photography, I’m going to recommend you spend some money on a real camera.
With that said, if you can find good lighting and nail the composition, you can capture some pretty great images with your phone.
Just a quick disclaimer before we move on: I’m an iPhone guy and so much of what I cover below is within the context of an iPhone, though I’m sure it’s applicable to Android phones as well.
Stick to the main camera
As I touched on above, the main camera (the 1x on an iPhone) will typically offer better image quality than the wide and zoom options. Also, be aware that, on an iPhone anyway, the 2x option is a digital zoom, which trades longer focal length for reduced quality.
RAW mode for more control
HDR mode for more detail
Likewise, most phone cameras have an HDR (high dynamic range) mode (on by default in new iPhone models). In HDR mode, the camera will take multiple exposures when you click the button and then stack them into a single photo. It’s a clever little trick that tries to overcome the limitations of the smaller sensor. You can also stack photos with a real camera and most bodies have tools to automate the process.
Be aware that there is some software involved and sometimes the images produced can look a little over-processed. The files themselves are limited to jpg format.
Portrait mode for more depth
You’ll have to choose between RAW, HDR and Portrait modes. You can’t stack them.
If you’re comfortable with photo processing software, I’d recommend starting with RAW as it’s going to give you the most control over the final image. You may also want to try taking photos in all three modes as one may give you better results depending on the lighting and composition.
Adjust the exposure
Cameras do their best to interpret the amount of light hitting the sensor and expose the scene correctly but they don’t always get it right. Most phones give you the ability to adjust exposure without a third-party app. On an iPhone, it’s as easy as tapping on the screen and dragging the sunshine slider up and down to adjust your exposure.
Use a different camera app
ProCamera is highly rated as is Pro Camera by Moment (I’m sensing a theme). ProCam – Pro Camera is another solid option.
Yes, those are three different apps.
Consider add-on grips and lens kits
For example, grip options like ShiftCam Pro work to make your camera feel and operate more like a mirrorless camera body. They not only help you to hold the phone more steadily but they also can put more advanced camera settings at your fingertips.
Some come with lenses, some don’t.
Do you need a real camera?
Having read all of this, you may be wondering how you know when it’s time to add a camera to your golf bag.
Ultimately, it depends on what you plan to do with your photos. If they’re never going to leave your phone or at least never go farther than your computer screen, your phone is likely everything you need. You can probably even make some small to mid-sized prints.
The fact of that matter is that if you can find good lighting and nail the composition, you’ll be able to capture some pretty great course photos.
But for some (me), that won’t be enough.
“When you have to zoom in on a phone to get the proper composition, it’s time to get a real camera,” says Koenig. “When you are looking to compose a photograph with blurred elements, it’s time to get a real camera. When you want to expand and frame a photograph, it’s time to get a real camera.”
Simply, if you’re looking to capture something to hang on your wall at a reasonable size that might just pass for a professional effort, you’re going to need a real camera.
What should I buy?
Travel light and golf hard.
I’m hesitant to make any specific recommendations because so much depends on your level of commitment and your budget. Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that your lens(es) are more important than the camera body.
With that said, just like with golf clubs, buying the previous model is a great way to save some money. For example, Nikon just released the Z6 III, so the more than capable Z6 II has been heavily discounted. A new Sony’s a7II is less than $1,000. There are a variety of lower-priced entry-level options as well but your best bang for the buck will come from the used market.
KEH is a great source for used gear though it’s typically a bit more expensive than eBay. The upside is their grading system provides confidence that what you buy will be as advertised.
When it comes to lenses, a quality mid-range zoom is an excellent starting point. You’ll be able to cover a wide range of focal lengths and eliminate the need to carry multiple lenses. Something like a 24-105mm f/4 from Sony or Canon will work as will Nikon’s 24-125mm f/4.
“It will work for most shots,” says Koenig. “Travel light and golf hard.”
Solid advice.
There are alternatives (both focal length and cost-driven) to the suggestions above but other than your creative eye, your lenses will be your most important pieces of equipment.
Don’t sweat the brand stuff too much. Evan Schiller shoots on a Sony A7R5 body because of the high megapixel sensor, the generally smaller size and because it’s designed to work with his Sony drone. Patrick shoots with a mix of Nikon bodies including a Z6, Z7, and Z9. I’ve used Nikon and Canon (and Minolta before Sony acquired it). They’re all great and all three offer a wide range of lenses and plenty of options in the secondhand market.
You can also just keep using your phone while improving your composition skills.
A final word
“On the golf course, you never know when a magical moment or event will jump out and surprise you. I always bring mine.”
Bring yours, too.
For more inspiration, be sure to follow Evan Schiller and Patrick Koenig.
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