Corporate golf tournament Thursday, August 23, 2007

A golfer tees off Aug. 21 on the 18th hole at the Reserve Vineyards and Golf Club's South course in Aloha, Ore.

I spent the better part of Tuesday and Wednesday this week shooting this corporate event and the next evening's charity auction.

It was fun, but a bit trickier than I expected. What the company is looking for is shots of players interacting, laughing with each other, etc. And that does happen, but it's very unpredictable.

The only time you know exactly where the players will be is the tee. And this (see first picture) is where my contact suggested I start shooting. She was right that the view down the 18th fairway to the clubhouse is a fantastic backdrop, and the light was pointing in the right direction. However, the action is all facing away from you. So after taking a few shots there, I thought I'd try to find a tee that had a similar view but with the golfers headed away from the clubhouse.

At the Reserve, that view is probably there from the 10th tee. However, by the time I got there, the last of the golfers I needed to shoot had just left.

So I went to the 18th green. On the green, of course, you can get a lot closer to the golfers, but they could be coming at the hole from any direction. Usually, it seems, a foursome will be spread out around the four points of the compass. And as they get ready for their shot, they'll joke and laugh with each other—from where their ball lies. Tough to make the kind of picture I was looking for.

And fairway shots... the golfers are even farther apart. So I made some big, wide-angle shots on the green, and a few fairway shots when the golfers were in range. But mostly I concentrated on tight shots on the green, like I might for a normal golf tournament, waiting for the reaction of the golfer when they make (or don't make) the shot. And once in a while you get lucky, when two golfers put their balls close together on the green, and joke with each other while the others make their shots.

Katie (or perhaps Katy) was selling mulligans around the course on behalf of the company organizing the event. She was kind/unfortunate enough to be on hand for an exposure check.