No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 210: Golf Photographer David Cannon

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

Getty Sports photographer David Cannon joins us to talk about his legendary career in golf covering the game from Jack, to Seve, to Tiger, and into the latest era in golf. We talk about some of his iconic images, how much photography has changed over the year, what golf experiences he holds near and dear, and some photography tips for amateurs as well. Thanks a ton to David for the time! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah. That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Alright guys, welcome back to the podcast. We have a great episode today. I had an interview this week with David Can and David, if you're not familiar, I'm going

to try not to repeat myself too much from what I say in the intro when he comes on, but an absolutely legendary career as a golf photographer has traveled all over the world, covering just an almost uncountable amount of events, masters, open champion chips, rider cups, and has seen it all. And even if you're not familiar with his name, his pictures are everywhere. Just opened up the issue of sports illustrated the big picture of Tiger Woods after winning the Masters as of course from David Cannon, from Getty Sports. He teaches a few lessons on photography, how he got into it, and we've never had a photographer on,

and he's the one we had circled on our list to have on for quite some time. But we are gonna be, as many of you are familiar, we're gonna be in Ireland for the next couple of weeks, actually shooting season four of our travel series, Taurus SAUCE. So don't expect anything, PGA Tour, a professional golf related over the next couple of weeks. We have another episode with a PGA Tour winner

from this season that will go up next Sunday night. And then we have this issue as well. We're really looking forward to this trip. Follow us along on Instagram, on Twitter, and whatnot. At No Laying Up, we have Chad Coleman from Caloay's coming with us. Tom Coyne, the author of many of your favorite golf books will be with us as well. And speaking of Caloay, you know how passionate they are about the game of golf and the people who make it special. So from now through May 31st, Caloay is donating $4 from every dozen ERC soft yellow golf balls sold to the Children's Miracle Network Hospital. So, yet you heard that right, every time you buy a box of ERC soft yellows, it directly benefits Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, a nonprofit organization that raises funds

for children's hospitals as part of the industry-wide play yellow campaign. So pick up your ERC soft yellow golf balls with triple track technology in stores or online at CallawayGolf.com and help support an amazing program. Without any further delay, let's get to our interview with David Cannon. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No-Lang-Up podcast. I'm joined from the other side of the pond today by a legend in the golf industry. He is a golf photographer, even if you don't know him by name, I promise you have seen his photographs. His name is David Cannon. David, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. That's a pleasure.

Well, for all of us that, you know, I know a bit about your background, but I'm sure a lot of the listeners don't. I want to know how long you've gotten, how long you've been in golf photography, who you've worked for and how you got into it. Okay, well, who I've worked for is quite simple, because I effectively, I've worked for and how you got into it. Okay, well, who I've worked for is quite simple, because I effectively, I've worked for one company

for the last 37 years, and that company is, well, it's now Getty Images, but we originally all sport, and we were bought by Getty Images, so, you know, an all sport was an international picture agency, so, in effect, we, you'd see my pictures all over the world because the agency you know is effective all over the world and especially with getting images nowadays you will see the pictures in all the far flung parts of the world. So that's easy bit and you know I've been in it as I say since 1983 I joined all sports so and I'm sure it's outdated now and I'm wondering if you've Yeah, yeah, I've probably added about 10 to that. Yeah, no, no, at least 10, I should think, yeah, and over five and a half

thousand nights in hotel rooms. And okay, so do you keep all of your stats? Because I'd be curious to see what if you have a run down of them. Well, no, I roughly did. I mean, I did this for a project two years ago that that figure came from two years ago. And, you know, I didn't keep it accurately, obviously, but I do remember very clearly what events I do have covered all my life, because pictures

are easy to remind you. I mean, there were some amazing stats. I thought that traveling around the world was quite important, but the best one to me was effectively, I reckon I've walked from London to Auckland and New Zealand covering golf while I'm covering golf tournaments. 26,000 miles basically. Do you wear a fit bit or anything to track your steps? Yeah, between 15 and 25,000 a day carrying up to 35 pounds worth of camera equipment. Because we have to walk, we don get buggy's like the TV crews do

Do you look down upon all the TV crews that walk around in carts and you got to lug all the equipment around yourself? Sometimes we do when there's a big hill, you know We long to be on the back of a car But actually I think I find you find better angles if you're a bit more flexible and able to walk and One thing you know when I'm photographing a golf course, I tend to try and avoid going in a buggy in a funny sort of way because unless there's time constraints on me, obviously you can get around quicker in a buggy, but I love walking because I see angles and see positions. You don't see if you're driving around.

Do you have any kind of estimation as to how many photographs you've taken over the years? Well, I mean hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands. I mean, here's a good example. When I was starting, if I went to my first, second or third masters, I remember clearly shooting, and that was 84 was my first one, so this year was my 36 in a row. I remember shooting about between 50 and 70 rolls of film, 36 exposures each. So you know, with a rough mass that's maybe 2,000 pictures in the whole week. I shoot now with these digital cameras 2,000 pictures in a morning and can get to easily 4000 in a day. So you can see the difference you know with technology straight off. So we were shooting film up to 2002. So you know, I can make a rough estimate but I mean I shoot 10 times as much basically now because it doesn't

cost us anything. Right. How different is you is your job today than it was when you started? I mean, I was just in reading some of your profiles and see the fact that you would take a picture and have no idea what it looked like until the next week absolutely blows my mind. Yeah, yeah. I'd fly back from the masters with a bag of raw film, just exposed film.

And then you'd wait for three to five hours for it all to be processed, and then it would take you another two hours to edit it. And then you've got to rely on the darker and to make copies for you. I mean, clients weren't seeing our pictures until, say, the Friday after the Masters, unless they were a special client who, you know, we would make a very quick delivery to them. So, yeah, it's crazy the changes. Now how does it work? Is the photos you take, do they go uploaded automatically to something? Do you have to go back in the media center to upload them somewhere?

Well, I'll get normally at a big event. If I'm working in a Getty Images team, we would have a crew of editors at the event so that's to say the major or a rider cup or one of the bigger ones we'd actually have onsite editors and we either use runners from the course or if there's a good enough phone signal but you know when you get 40,000 people in the same place, the phone signal can be a bit tricky, but you can transmit from the camera. And so that will then send straight back to the editors via an FGP site. And you know what, when we're say a tournament in the Middle East, say it, then one of the Dubai tournaments, where there's not very big crowds and also there's

very, very good phone signals. We have remote editors in London that we again transmit this DP site from the camera and then the editors in London do all the editing and sending them out. It's only minutes from the moment you've taken a picture to them when they're up on the website. That's wild.

So transitioning a bit from the technical aspects of the photography, we're recording this on Wednesday after the Masters. You were there obviously this weekend, I think you just said it was 36 straight Masters, you've covered. We just saw Tiger Woods win it, putting aside the photography side, if it's a golf fan, and I assume you are a golf fan if you've been in this industry this long. What was that like to be there? Epic, I mean, really amazing. I mean, you know, we have a love, I've had a love hate, not I, but I have not really a love hate relationship with Tiger, but Tiger brought its own issues to the business. And you know, from being a very civilized, we were very

much welcomed as photographers, wherever we went to suddenly getting all the pressure of having tiger around. You know, the restrictions came hard and fast in the late 90s, and all the hype with it caused, you know, very few photographers cover golf really, and you know, it was just a small, and then suddenly we were, because of tiger, the interest, the media interest, was so increased,

it was suddenly became very, very hectic. And I had a problem with that in a funny sort of way, so it took me a little bit of time to get used to that. Then since then it's changed slightly, you know, he obviously, he had his dip and then things got kind of easy again. Now he's back, I know it's going to get tough again, but he brings an unbelievable spark to the game of golf. And to be there on Sunday was, you know, a real privilege, to be honest. And you can't describe the sort of difference I've never seen crowd. It was a gust of people. It was very not rare, but rare but only on certain occasions you had big following galleries with

a group. But I promise you from that first hole to the 18th hole it was 6 to 8 deep, every single hole. And you know we can't work inside the ropes at Augusta. So for us it brings its own challenge. And I'm tall and I've got an English accent which helps a little bit but you know there were certainly occasions I wasn't even there was just no point in even trying to get in front of people so you know it brings its own issues but I would never have missed what he did on Sunday it's just incredible to see. Well and that's kind of what I want to get at is that I'm sure a lot of people realize how much of a challenge it is to photograph and to work at Augusta for you guys?

And I know. So do you have to game plan to maybe get a whole or two ahead of him? Or you have a great photograph that I'll try to tag in the notes to the show of, you have him from behind as he puts his hands in the air. So how do you, is that just experience to be in the right spot, right time? No, where the crowd's going to be down or you know, that's do that. Well, so the 18th hole or gust on it, again, it always amazes me. How few people can see that 18th hole right when you're there.

There's no grandstands and there are a little bit of rises, you know, natural natural hillocks or bumps, whatever you'd like to call them, round the green. grandstands and there are a little bit of rises, you know, natural, natural hillocks or bumps, whatever you'd like to call them, round the green. There's a little amphitheater, but I you know I couldn't equate what the figures are, but so few people get a good view of that final green, but this Sunday was quite incredible because I was on the right hand side of the green as you know you can see from my pictures that I got back side of Tiger when he made that arms up in the air moment which still made its own lovely picture.

But if when I look down the fairway it was extraordinary I've never seen a sea of people like it was all the way down to the eighth hole. Anybody who could get any sort of elevation to see it, they were seeing it from 250 yards away. And I've never seen that, I'd argue, I'll say. And so, you know, we work as a team at Getty. We get four credentials for the tournament. And we have, there are three official photographic pens

around the 18th green, which we have to access from the back of the crab which brings its own challenge and each of these pens has between 8 and 12 photographers in and Then the rest of us the rest of photographers have to you know queue up at 6.30 on a Sunday morning To get in a line to place their chairs around the 18th green Just like everyone else. Yeah, just like anyone else. So I always take the right hand side of the green because I like trying to get picture of the potential winner on the 16th, 17th, 18th holes. And the only sort of place to the

side you've got a chance of getting into late is the right hand side of the green. And over the last couple of years, you know, I've done a sneaky little with it, with it escorted by a ping-ponged and guard up the inside of the rope, you know, as the lead is coming up to play a second shot on the 18th hole and squeezing it at the back of this pen on the side of the green, which is again, you have to be contortionist to get in there. So, which I'm beginning to get less and less at 64 years old. You had mentioned too, and I think that Augusta used to have towers that for the first, when did they remove those and was that just a free for all to get up to access to those? No, again, we used to get, we were, again, it was the last, it was the only

place you could get to late on in the day. So I always used to take the tower to the left of the green this time. Oh my god, I wish I'd been up there this year because that picture if that tower had been there this year would have been totally epic. And you know that's it we obviously fought very very hard for it to be you know kept in place or something similar kept there in place but you they're very, very, very careful of what they want to see at Augusta. And those towers had been there, I don't know, for 30 years, whatever,

however long they had them there. The problem it was that they were only full for the last afternoon, in the last nine holes or last six holes, when apart from odd moments, when say Nick Price was coming up, the 18th, trying to break the course record or something like that. But you know, sadly I must have been four or five years ago they were taken down and you know you come back

sorry they're not there anymore and that's Augusta for you. But again added to the problems. I don't understand it but but I'm very by, I come from a very biased angle. Well, you know, you're responsible for, I'm gonna say one of the most famous golf photos of all time, but you're also responsible for many of them, but the one I'm referring to is Jack with his putter raised on 17 at the 86 masters. I'm just curious how, I think if there's ever an event

that can compare to something in the 80s, it is the masters because it was in the pre, they're still in the pre-self on arrow when you go there. Yeah, yeah. That idea of scores being posted around a golf course and crowds cheering is really, it kinda hits me in my golf feels, if you will.

I just wonder if you could compare, have you ever seen anything like what happened this past weekend with Tiger, other than what happened with Jack in 86. Oh, very difficult. I mean, it was still the same. Every time Tiger made a birdie, I was down on the, you know, by Aimen Corner in 12-12-T area.

And I sat there for about the last six or seven groups that came through. And every time Tiger made a birdie there was an absolutely epic cheer down there and he was nowhere to be seen and that was very similar to when Jack started you know eagling I think he called 15 didn't he and birdie 16 and those two cheers were astonishing and when they went up, you know, the score went up on the 17th green when Chuck just finished 16, incredible, the noise and then obviously I had to fight and I remember in those days there's a little bit more, a little bit more of a back to the right of the 17th hole. So you had a little bit more chance of getting an angle. Now they've taken away that bank completely.

I've got an angle. Now they've taken away that bank completely. So if someone's, you know, it was eight deep there on Sunday, for instance, when Tiger was making his putt and I wouldn't have got a single thing if he'd hold it really. But, you know, when Jack did it, I had a little bit of height, obviously I've got a height advantage because I'm over six foot and I've got, luckily I didn't get anybody throwing their arms up in front of me, which is another thing that happens all the time, if you're behind people. And that's a beauty in a way not having mobile phones there, because one of the, one of the hazards we get now is that, you know, you have to be so aware of people just shoving a mobile phone up in the air in front of you. Well, on that height note, I was reading a story to about the photo you have of Phil at the 2010 Masters

on the Pine Straw on 15. I was wondering if you could tell the story how you got that photo. Well, that was another begging at the last minute, you know, to find a little squeeze, a little gap from behind him. And again, another issue we get with Augusta nowadays is there's a lot more television crew out there. And instead of only having one camera, there's usually, there's now lot more television crew out there and instead of only having one camera that's usually there's now two cameras on each player on each shot so you have to be aware of that and you know so you can't take an angle straight behind the player and I remember when Phil was playing that shot I had to move quite a bit and then I just literally found a gap between you know a small person was in front of me basically

in between two tall people and I was over that person's head, you know, hand holding a really big lens and those big lenses weigh quite a bit and I managed to, you know, catch a shot of film playing that shot. It's not the shot I wanted because the shot you'd obviously want from that picture is to see the full context of the shot, you know, the tree right in front of him and then the green in the distance. But you know, it is that shot and it's a great record of that shot and I don't think very many people got that at all. Well, okay, so I'm gonna pick your brain on choosing the angles that you take photographs from.

And I think it's kind of tie-in. I was going to kind of save this for the end for kind of giving people advice on taking photos in life in general. But I feel like, correct me if I'm wrong in saying this, that a really good photographer isn't necessarily looking at the foreground of what they're taking. That needs to be the focus.

But the background is what makes it really important. Is that accurate to say? Oh, very, very accurate. I mean, I have a couple of rules if I can make the rules. I try to avoid all across the rope in the background. All these tournaments have bright yellow ropes or something that cut through a photo picture. And I try to use a long lens quite a bit, which makes the background go out of focus a lot more. So you isolate the subject

and then there's other occasions you know where you want to show the background because you want to see like Phil shot you want to see that shot into the 13th green you want to show the whole context of it but again I'm trying to place myself where I don't say have a television camera crew in it or I don't have big white tents in the background or ugly buildings or you know it's just it's a combination of things but light is very important to me I was born and bred on colour photography and you know in the days of shooting slide film in the 80s the the the the the colour and the use of that colour film meant you had to be so careful of where the sun was. You know, only when in the first hour and the last hour of light, when it's strong sunshine,

where you're getting under people's hats and visors, so there's no shadows. Because the digital cameras nowadays handle the shadows a lot more effectively. And you see a lot more detail under a visor, but when it was on this old contrasty slide films, good luck. You just see a black area, you would never see any eyes. You know, and the eyes are the most important part of a picture. You know, everything you do in this business is focus on the eyes. You can forget about the rest of a picture. When you look at a picture, people's eyes are drawn to the focus on the eyes of the subject. So that's a very important thing as well. Okay, so you've kind of started to answer it

but I was dead set on kind of asking this question. I want you to bear with me for a second. I'm going to play the role of an ignorant viewer about photography that knows nothing about it. And I'm going to say, hey, what's so hard about your job? You aim a camera and you push a button. And I do kind of want you to, in detail, even if we don't necessarily understand the lexicon, explain the kind of process of taking a photo, balancing light, aperture, all that stuff,

to just kind of put into context what photo, balancing light, aperture, all that stuff to just kind of put in the context what it takes to take a great photograph. Well, I can start. It's probably easier and more effective to describe what it was like when we were shooting a film. And that was just such a different process to what it is now. But the bottom line, you still got to expose it properly because if you don't expose a digital file correctly you're losing content of that image because you haven't exposed that area correctly, it doesn't record effectively the light in the right way. So you have to expose it really, really well. And that's the thing with

with film. It had to be exposed properly. So I was very lucky when I first started taking pictures that I had a very, very good mentor, Neville Chadwick in Leicester, which is the city I come from. He gave me two pieces of advice, the very first event I went to with him and I was just sitting, minding his cameras while he ran the line at the rugby match. And he said, just sit in the corner, he said, I'll give you two tips. Focus on the eyes and try and fill the frame. And so that was where I started with those two pieces of advice and they have helped firm all the way through my career. And then I soon learned after a few little

disasters with it about exposing colour film, but unless you expose things properly, the pictures were never going to get used, were they were just worthless basically. So, you know, I suddenly it's not just pointing the camera you've got to point the camera you've got to know the sport that's very important but you've got to learn how to use the camera to expose things right so shutter speed and aperture became very very important and now sport is obviously generally a fast action things so you need to use the high shutter speeds and also one of the things that we like about high quality sports images is you lose the background

and the two techniques for that are to either use a long lens or you work work on lenses at wide open apertures and then you get depth of field issues because the depth of field for an image, you know, if I'm shooting say Seville Ballastero on the 18th Green at St Andrews, that famous picture of him, you know, celebrating so brilliantly when he won in 1984, I probably had six inches of depth of field from 30 yards. So from 30 yards away, there's only six inches. I have to have that camera manually focused onto a point. So with it on his face, it has to be within six inches correct or else the picture is going to be out of focus and not usable. And you won't know that until the next week?

No, I didn't know until the next morning. I drove overnight with that pitch. I was so excited about it. I thought, I'm going to get down to London for six o'clock in the morning so that I can process that. So I literally drove overnight with that one. So that has kept me, I think, that has been one of the best things I've learnt. In that first two to three years learning how to expose film

properly. Is that the one photo of yours that you that you think is your best or your favorite? Oh it's my favorite because he's my hero. Full stop. I've got to know Stephanie really quite well and I spent a lot of time with him doing books and you know ad shoots for his clothing companies and just went to Spain a couple of times to his home and did features with him at home. And I think we had a very much of a huge mutual respect for each other. And he was just such an amazing person to photograph because he had one of the best smiles you could ever see but also he could scowl like nobody else and he could you know look angry like anybody

at nobody else and he was just I think in my career there's been four golfers that every single day I go out. I knew I was going to get a special picture. Now Sevy was the first one. Greg Norman was probably the next one in the 90s. He was amazing to photograph. Then Long came Tiger, absolutely incredible to photograph. You know, those eyes of Tiger's are just brilliant. And if you're focusing on people's eyes, those are the easiest eyes you've ever seen to photograph.

And then, you know, Rory has come along. Now, he's been brilliant to photograph, but he's not quite the same. I wouldn't say he's got them. He does react amazingly. And, but he's, you know, his game hasn't quite kicked on as I thought it would from three years ago. But I'm still hoping that he's going to be my fourth one. So, you know, you kind of touched on, you know, we were talking about there about hoping that the pictures are in focus and all that.

I was wondering if there's any horror stories of, you know, you shoot for a whole week and you get back, you get back the next week and you realize everything was wrong. Is there any learning experiences? Yeah, I've been lucky, Touchwood. You know, I've had, you know, I've had no real total out and out disasters.

I've had moments when say eight films because we used to have what they call racks of film. When you used to process the slide film, they'd go on racks that would take four rolls of film at a time. They'd hang over these racks. And I've had eight roles just being completely fried. Because nothing you can do, there is absolutely nothing you can do. I've only once formatted a digital card when I shouldn't have done, but then there's the rescue program that can get you some of it back, not guaranteed, but that takes ages and is so infuriating.

So I've only done that once and I won't do it again. He learns from that. Yeah, but when we were processing film, the accidents did happen. I have heard of awful disasters when whole jobs have been written off because the film might have been x-rayed. That was another thing we had in those days. You come back and suddenly these little blue lines all down the film, it means they'd been zapped in the x-ray machine

at the airport. Yeah, so you know, that's gone luckily. Have you ever had a camera accidentally go off and someone's back? Oh, yeah, Rory, yeah, that's the worst one ever. It was, and I wasn't actually my fault because I was able to leave the camera on the ground and it was firing away Merrily on its own it got a electrical short in the terrible weather in the open at St. George's and it was right behind him in beautiful sky It was a really lovely picture or it would have been and I just literally I just pressed it as he was about you know half focus on these cameras the half press and I pressed it and it suddenly

started firing away. He's just taking his take away on the 18th tier. It's gorgeous. And he turns round and looks at me, you know, and then he suddenly looks and I put it on the ground and says, you know, I can't stop it. And I literally couldn't stop it. It was going click, click, click, click, click. Right on the ground in front of me eventually, I just dragged the battery out, but I was mortified, you know, and he was in playing a decent round at that stage but so that's my worst one. Did he complete the swing or did he start before he... No he stopped the swing. He stopped luckily.

So you know we were able to go again as they say but yeah so that's the worst I've had was not blaming water totally for that but I could have been worst I've had with the now I'm blaming water totally for that, but I could have been me. I could have pressed too hard. I don't know. What's your favorite place to visit or to photograph or you know, place you go back to a lot or any place you've been one time? I love Turnbri in Scotland. I am absolutely, you know, the fact that a certain president in the United States owns it is oblivious to me because I think what he's done to that golf course is beyond sensational. The golf golf course is now. I didn't think he'd get much better than it was, but I can honestly say the changes they've

Martin Ebert has made to the Aelsa course at Turnbri have been absolutely sensational. And also the other course that King Robert the Bruce now is a golf course that really matches up to the Aelsa course as well, but I love Turnbri because my mother was based there during the war. And every time we used to go holidays, it's family holidays in Scotland, we used to stop at Turnbury on the way up and so it became a very special place to me and you know I've been lucky enough to work for Turnbury in the course pitches for 25, 30 years now

and I love going to Scotland, I love Scotland you you know, I'm blood, but I must admit when I went to New Zealand, wow, I've got some golf courses down there and that's an extraordinary country to go to. What culture, attention in New Zealand, the most, Cape Kidnappers, kidnappers and carry cliffs, both of them in their own way, you know, they're just sensational. And then I went to play played with me too which is it's leopard creek in South Africa okay which is owned by a fantastic South African businessman Johann Rupert and this golf course is literally the augustre of South Africa or almost the augustre

of the rest of the world it's got sub systems, you know, the most amazing course designed by Jack Nicholas and Gary Player between them. And it is right on the edge, literally you've got the huge river, crocodile river, golf course, and then on the other side of it is the Kruger National Park. And you know, you can stand behind the 13th green, look out of there

and there's elephants, crocodiles, anything you want by the edge of that river and even on the golf course there are obviously a lot of leopards by the name of the golf course but I've been out there and there's giraffe in the middle of the first fairway you know it's a fantastic place to go and it's the most amazing, amazing golf course. I remember, you know, we met you in Abu Dhabi last year, actually, and you were talking with a business partner in mind. And I remember you had mentioned to him that you really liked photographing in Dubai. Oh, yeah.

Well, that's another part of the world. And I've been there since my first went to 1986. There was hardly a blade of grass in Dubai in 1986, so any description, anywhere. That was when they had the Emirates Golf Club as the first plans were drawn up and the Sheikh Mohammed had this vision for Dubai to become the business centre of the Middle East, basically. And it was his vision and they decided that golf could become part of this a very important catalyst for attracting major businesses to the area. And the Emirates Golf Club was the first one.

And I photographed the Emirates Golf Club from a square kilometer of desert to now and I've got amazing pictures from the changes from 86 to 2000 and I think the last time went up in a helicopter was 2014 and I took pictures from the same angle and it's indescribable you know and there's now probably 25 grass golf courses, fantastic quality in Dubai alone. Abu Dhabi have now come fast on their heels and in Oman, and Qatar, and all those countries, even Saudi now getting into golf. I heard someone telling me that they're going to build 25 grass courses in Saudi in the next 10 years Not if Sergio has anything to say with it about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know But you know, it just shows that yeah

It's a kind of a false boom for golf in that area those areas But they're very very important and you know device Contribution to the European tour has been massive. Right. What, how many countries have you been to? Do you have a tally of that? Yeah, 116 was the latest. 116. Yeah. Because I did a lot of, I did a lot of football photography in my early days. And my goodness, football takes you all over the world.

You know, I basically did the whole of South America in, in a three week trip. What are some of the most exotic places you've been? Well, could Costa Rica was pretty good. Fun, Honduras was pretty fun. When I did the football in those two countries, I went to the Far East Thailand. It's absolutely beautiful. It's hard to describe it.

Yeah, I get a bit spoiled, don't I? When you think about it, I love India. I think India is one of the most incredible countries to go to. I haven't done enough golf in India, but I think India for fantastic people and just amazing colors. As a photographer, I don't think you'll find a better country to go to. And I've just finished up taking pictures the whole of my holiday there.

Is there any country you haven't been to that you're really dying to get to? Well, I've had a 12 hour layover in Moscow and actually I haven't done anything more than that in Russia, which is amazing to me. And I'm really quite keen to go to Russia. I think, I don't know why, but I just got some sort of mystery about it to me. Iceland was high on the top of my list, but I finally went there last year. And that was, you know, I went there in mid-Liv June, Midnight Golf, literally Midnight Golf, teeing off at 5 to Midnight. And, hey, you know, by course to one, there was full daylight out there basically.

It was extraordinary. I did that up in Northern Norway a couple summers ago. It's hard to describe to people. Yeah, I went to Lofton and it's described it as bright as it is today at any moment at three o'clock in the morning. It's unbelievable. Yeah. What are some of the best golf experiences you've ever had?

And on the same ends I was going to say, if you had, like, if you had to play your final round of golf tomorrow and you got to choose any course, what would that be? Well, other than the else, of course, at Turnberry, I've got a very big affection for old head of Kinseil. Okay. Yeah, I think that's, in terms of golfing experiences, I don't think you can go, you have to go a long way to beat that as an experience. It's not, if you're a pure, you know, an analyst of a golf course, you'd have a lot of reasons to

think old head is a Mickey Mouse golf course. That's very unfair to call it Mickey Mouse, but it's a trick golf course in a lot of ways. There's quite a few blind shots and also some of the bounces can be quite testing, so we say. But for breast taking views and then the most amazing clubhouse, the most amazing accommodation, you can go there and lose yourself for four days and that's it, you know, play golf, eat and just has the most beautiful, fun, most beautiful place you can imagine. So there, and you carry cliffs in New Zealand with another one that was really, really sensational.

I hear that about Oldhead, the site is and the scenery is just second to none but the course itself isn't necessarily the greatest experience but it's just something you got to see I mean the pictures from it are just incredible that they would think to put a land but that kind of not just similar I would think to Cape kidnappers the way they lay out that back nine amongst the close there. Yeah yeah I think you know to me I think the west coast of Ireland Yeah, I think, you know, to me, I think the west coast of Ireland is very, very hard to be anywhere in the world playing golf. Yeah, you could start up at Bali, Liffin and go all the way around that wild Atlantic way, all the way down to old head and play, you know, many, many golf courses that are just

most beautiful experience you could ever imagine. Well, that by the time this podcast airs, that's exactly where we're going to be funny enough. We're going to take off. Next week, I'm going to let you out here on two, two questions here. And you've kind of already answered one of them. And I liked your answer on, you know, focus on the eyes and filling the frame.

But to anyone, any amateur photographer out there, even if they're taking pictures on their phone, what's like some simple advice you would give people? Yeah. Um, watch your backgrounds. Literally, you know, try and fill that frame. Even the family shot, you know, it's an amazing house, something in the background can distract what, you know, from the picture you're trying to take, or the moment you're trying to remember. So that's the most important thing.

And obviously the light's quite important as well. So you're just gonna make sure there's enough light there to get a decent quality picture. And if you're shooting on iPhones, try and make a book every year. You know, for my family, I religiously make a book every year so that we've got a printed record of our year. And I think, you know, this day and age, so many people take hundreds of pictures, and you never see them in print.

And it's amazing how powerful, and it still images in print. Yeah, without a doubt. You've seen the game of golf change in many ways over the course of several decades in the industry. What do you think the future of golf looks like and do you like kind of where the game is currently trending? You know what, I've got two ways to look at this. I think that the game of golf itself has improved. You can't even imagine the equipment, the standard of the golf courses. When I think back to play, I played quite seriously as an amateur in the 70s.

I remember, you've never played greens even close to what we have nowadays. The actual quality of golf has improved so, so, so much. The clubs are better, the balls are better. The opportunity is to play everywhere better, you can fly everywhere you want. But my biggest concern is the age of people playing the game of golf. And I think, I know the RNA, the USDA, I'm so well aware of this, but the pace of play is one of the nastiest things we've got in golf at the moment. Something has to be done to speed it up. When I was playing amateur golf, if we were over 3,500 or 3 ball, we were crucified.

And, you know, I had a son who went to play college golf in America where I have a son who has played college golf in America his first one he rang me in at almost fits of rage saying I've just taken six hours ten minutes to play 18 holes and I rang his coach and I said he said I'm fried it's like this every week and I just think know, five and a half hours is a norm. So somewhere someone's got to get a hold of the speed of play because we're losing golfers left, right, and center. You know, there's a stat around in Britain

that were 400,000 golfers down in the last 10 years. Membership wise, and golf courses. And that's a pretty frightening stat. Well, you guys do have much better with the pace of play on your side of the pond than we do over here. I know. Yeah, we're straighter on the European tour, definitely. Well, you can just casual play.

I mean, we played around at the St. Andrews new course a couple of years ago, four of us walking. And we made the turn in an hour and 50 minutes, and we got told to speed it up at the turn. We were like, okay, we were not in kids the city more. Very last question, how do you have any idea how long you're going to stay in golf photography? Do you have any plans to retire? Are you going to stick around forever? As long as my body, my legs and my eyes keep going, I love it so much. You know, it's what I do. I mean, how many people in their lives can say that every single day they get up, they look forward to working and I've had

this since I found photography and it's been an amazing part of my life and golf's been an amazing part of the life all the way through and I just hope I'm going to make I won't say I'll make 50 masters but if I make certainly make 40 which is you know for a way. And I hope I can make my 50 open championships and then see where I can make 150 majors. I've done 117 now. So if I can make 150 majors, I think I'll have left a great legacy to the game of golf. I think you're well, well, well on your way if not already there, David. So we appreciate you taking the time. I've really enjoyed hearing your stories and thank you for all you do for the game of golf like I said at the beginning I think people probably don't even realize how

often they see your pictures floating around and kind of what you what you add to the game so thanks for taking the time and for for giving us this interview so it was a blast very much looking forward to speak to you again some time all right I'll track you down the road. We'll do yeah, definitely all right thanks to zero That's better than most That is better than most.