The Eighteenth  |  Pebble Beach Golf Links  |  Pebble Beach, CA  |  AT&T National Pro-Am  |  2006

As the PGA Tour continues up the coast to Pebble Beach, I'll be taking a look back at my photo shoot from the 2006 AT&T National Pro-Am.  I'll start things off with one of my favorite shots from Pebble, a unique perspective of the eighteenth green.

It should be no secret that landscapes are better shot in the early morning or late afternoon, but this image will always stand out as an extreme example of that rule.  Having traveled from Atlanta to Carmel, I never quite adjusted to the west coast time.  So I found myself awake at around 6:30 a.m., that's east coast time, which of course was 3:30 a.m. in California.  So I just sat in the hotel room for a while, watching TV, reading a book, whatever I could do to pass the time.  I drove to the course, and arrived, in complete darkness, eventually waiting in the parking lot until someone could allow me on the grounds.  To say I was the first person out on the course is an understatement.

I ventured down to the eighteenth green, and decided to walk up into one of the luxury boxes along the right side of the fairway...and wait.  What I found was a perfect angle that allowed me to capture a very unique image of one of the most famous (and photographed) holes in the world.  You could only take this shot from atop this temporary perch during tournament week, unless you had access to a cherry picker, which is not very likely at Pebble Beach.  There's a lot I like about this image, but I love the fact that it stands out from all previous images I have seen of this hole.  That's not an easy task, but it's a fun challenge.

I also like the challenge of shooting landscapes during tournaments, as a successful image shot in tournament "conditions" would sort of contradict its current state.  It's difficult to do when the course is so often full of people, bleechers, TV towers, signage and various equipment, and at times I will go ahead and embrace some of those elements to set the scene.  Along the right side of this image, you can see a few ropes that were tying down a TV tower or scoreboard behind the green, providing a tiny clue that there is more going on here than the viewfinder (or the photographer) will allow you to see.