Golf
Girl’s golf player of the year portrait
My main assignment today was a portrait of the paper’s girl’s golf player of the year. The golfer goes to school in Oneida, a town about a two hour drive from Peoria on the edge of the paper’s coverage area. Unfortunately, there isn’t a golf course nearby so the background was the main challenge. On our way into the town, the reporter spotted a sign near the town’s grain terminal that looked interesting. I wanted to show that she came from a rural community so I decided to use the area near the train tracks as the background to help illustrate this.
Painful stroke
This is a frame from today’s Illinois state boys golf championship over in Normal, Ill. I was assigned to photograph another golfer in this group, but I couldn’t resist getting a shot of this guy’s expression. With that look, one would think that he just hit it into a 10,000 foot crevasse. He missed the fairway right and had to hit between a couple trees, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked.
On the beach
Austin City Golf Championship
Photographing golf can be difficult. I love to play golf, but it’s not one of my favorite sports to photograph. Usually I’m looking for a telling moment at the end of the given tournament when the winner is celebrating or when the loser gives up the championship on the last hole. On Sunday, I followed the final pairing for their entire 18 holes. After getting a few standard shots of all the players, I got creative and looked for some interesting shots. I was especially drawn to the golf course’s openness (lack of trees around the holes) and the sky dotted with clouds.