Sunday 15 August 2010

I've just finished the Wales Ladies Championship of Europe and, fortunately by way of a change during the week, the sun was out. Conwy Golf Club hosted the tour this week and I decided to do a few trophy shots with the winner, South Africa's Lee-Anne Pace, that would convey the classic links course feel. There was a fair bit of dry grass in the rough so I decided to use this as a foreground as it would complement the dark sky that I wanted. The contrast between the sky and the golden rough was useful as Lee-Anne was wearing all white, which in sunshine, can be challenging to expose properly. I used a polarising filter, a favourite of mine for deep blue skies. I used a 580ex strobe to fill in the shadows under the cap

Saturday 14 August 2010

Golf in Tenerife.

For me, there are several sides to Tenerife. There is the fish & chip, alcohol and nightclub strip of Los Christianos, the hustle and bustle of Santa Cruz and then there is the National Park, with Mount Teide and its sulphur springs. If all that was not enough, interspersed amongst it all are some pretty decent golf courses. One of my favourites is Buenavista Golf Club which is perched on the eastern side of the Island, about an hour and a half from the southern airport, (the imaginatively titled Tenerife South, TFS for short). Every hole on this golf course has a view of the sea with two built on a promontory that sticks out into the Atlantic. This can make for some fantastic photographs if the weather is on your side, sadly for the week I was there, there was only about 4 hours of really good sunlight and blue skies. I am a real fan of these conditions as you can get some stunning images that would usually mean lugging studio heads about, something I am not too keen on when excess baggage runs at about £15 a kilo!! The other factor is that flash guns are not allowed on the course during a tournament as they distract players so it is nice to have the opportunity to shoot with this kind of backdrop.
I took the shot of England's Melissa Reid (above) using a 1Ds MkII and 70-200mm f2.8 L IS 1/640 f4 ISO 320. Although you lose a bit of light with the circular polarising filter (CPL for short) you can see by the setting on the camera that the light was not that bright but there was enough to freeze the club and movement of the player and provide sufficient depth of field for the subject, (Mel). If I had wanted to freeze the moment of impact, I would have needed a shutter speed well in excess of 1/1000 sec as it was I preferred this shot as you can see the face and the eyes, something you can't do at impact as her head was down and the low peak of the cap blocks most of her face.