Photographer Evan Schiller shares the shots that show how beautiful this game can be

Anybody can take a picture of a golf hole with a smartphone. Quick glance at the framing in broad daylight. Try to get some background. Push the button. Easy.

But to capture golf courses in the best light consistently, to wait out the weather and the clouds, to frame a shot in such a way that golfers will spend hundreds of dollars or more to hang a print on their walls at home? That’s art.

Evan Schiller has been such an artist for decades. His photos have graced the covers of too many magazines to count, been featured on websites, are sold in pro shops and wow golf fans on social media. Schiller is one of just a handful of accomplished photographers specializing in commercial course photography that makes the rest of want to climb into an airplane to reach the best destinations in the game.

And there’s a lot more to it than just snapping a quick photo. He typically is hired well in advance by customers with high expectations. He shares his shots with the courses and sells them to consumers on his website, evanschillerphotography.com. On site at a course, he typically spends days looking for just the right shots at the perfect angles in flattering light. He uses traditional cameras and, in recent years, drones to make those shots happen.

No. 3 at Ballyneal in Colorado (Courtesy of Evan Schiller)

Schiller has a long track record in golf, both as a player and a club pro before hanging out his shingle as a photographer. He played on the college squads at Tulane and the University of Miami, where he teamed up with Woody Austin and Nathaniel Crosby. He played the mini-tours and plenty of state opens after college, going so far as the South African Tour in the 1980s. He then took his first club job at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in New York, later moving to Westchester Country Club. And that is where his love for photography blossomed.

His new website features more than 800 photos for sale on a variety of paper and other mediums. They are even available as MetalPrints, for which dye is infused directly onto specially coated aluminum to create a beautiful luminescence. The courses he has shot include many among Golfweek’s Best lists of top courses. Think Bandon Dunes, Pebble Beach, St. Andrews and the like.

The devil is in the detail for these kinds of high-level photos. Lighting is crucial to show the ground contours, and capturing just the right clouds can make or break a shot. It takes days of planning and sometimes a bit of luck with the weather, and frequently there are just minutes available in a given day when it all comes together perfectly. And Schiller has to coordinate it all with course operators and ground crews, going so far as to ensure that nobody has driven any machinery on a given hole before he arrives in the morning, thus leaving unsightly tire tracks in the dew. There’s a lot more to it than pushing a button.

The affable Schiller recently shared what goes on behind the scenes to make it all come together, on demand, time and again. The following are excerpts from that interview.

Golfweek: How did you get into course photography?

No. 5 of Bandon Dunes at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Evan Schiller)

Schiller: I had been taking some photos, and when I played in South Africa, I brought a camera and took some pictures. Not of the golf courses, but of the wildlife. My mother was a decent photographer, and my dad made some amateur movies as part of a movie club. So they had a background in film. But I never had any formal lessons. When I was an assistant at Westchester, I started taking some pictures of the golf course just for kicks. One of the guys who I worked with there, he said I should start selling some of these in the pro shop. I said, “Well, you know … ok.” So I sold some, and I just kind of went from there. And I didn’t really want to be in the golf business on that side anymore. I like the teaching part, but not always the rest of it. One year I played in the California Open out in the desert, and after the tournament some people told me I should go play this new golf course down the road. It was the Stadium Course at PGA West. It had just opened. So we went down to PGA West, and there was nothing out there then, just desert and golf course. I was walking down the ninth hole, a cool par 4 with a sand trap running the length of the fairway with Pete Dye’s railroad ties, and there was a lake there. The lake was calm, and there was a beautiful reflection of the mountains in the water. And I thought, I gotta start taking a camera with me. So when I got home, I bought a camera. And I started selling things in the shop at Westchester and a few other places. One thing led to another, and other courses started contacting me. That’s kind of how it went.

How much has it changed over years? And how much has changed with drones?

No. 18 at Payne's Valley at Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri, with the par-3 bonus hole behind the 18th green (Courtesy of Evan Schiller)

When I started, you shot with film. I still have boxes of all my slides and transparencies. I still have film in my freezer. To get some elevation and really see, we used bucket lifts and trucks and ladders and helicopters – not a lot of helicopters, because they were really expensive. And it’s hard to fly helicopters low over some courses that are in residential areas. So it was mostly lifts. Those lifts were a lot of work, and sometimes you would get up there and not be in the right spot, so now you’ve got to move it. It was ok and that was what we had, but you think about how much time was spent just moving the lift around to get into position, it was a lot. Now I take my drone with me, sitting right there in a cart, and I launch it and can move it to various spots in seconds. If time is an issue in regard to light, I can fly it two holes over and still get a shot and don’t have to drive over there. The efficiency of it is great, increasing what I can shoot and the angles I can shoot from. I can remember so many times being out on a golf course thinking, if I could just get over those trees or over that lake, it would be a really cool shot. I had the vision, but I didn’t know how to do it. The drones have changed all that.

How often do you surprise yourself with your shots, or does the technology with the drones and modern cameras take some of that surprise away?

No. 7 at Pebble Beach Golf Links in California (Courtesy of Evan Schiller)

One of the things now with digital versus shooting with film, back then you wouldn’t know what you had until you took it to the lab and got the photos back. Now I can just look at the back of the camera, or when flying the drone I can look at the app on the iPad. So I see what the drone sees. So you pretty much have a good idea of what you captured. The feedback is instantaneous. So I can go a little bit higher, a little over here, a little over there if I need to. You can still surprise yourself, but it’s an instantaneous surprise. Sometimes you look at a scene and just know, “This is going to be good.” After having done it for a number of years, you have this sense of when a scene is going to be really cool. I remember one time at Pebble Beach, the marine layer had come in and the light was no good. So I was just sitting on No. 7—a par 3 perched above the Pacific Ocean—waiting. And right before sunset, there was a break in the marine layer. As the sun went down and shoots through a little gap there in the clouds, I knew this could be epic, right? This was probably like 10 years ago, and I didn’t have any drones then. I had a ladder set up on the tee, and I basically stood on top of that ladder just watching and watching and watching. I had a feeling that when the light came through, it wasn’t going to last long. So I got the settings I thought would be correct, and I just stayed there. The sun came out for like 30 seconds, maybe a minute max. But it was just wow, the sun lit up and the clouds were purple, just wow. Sometimes it works like that.

How long do you usually get to spend on a site? Say you’re going to Pebble Beach or Bandon Dunes, how many days do you get to shoot?

The double green for Nos. 3 and 16 at the Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Evan Schiller)

It all just depends. Bandon and Pebble are a little different deals, because I have a licensing agreement with them. In other words, you can’t just go shoot Pebble Beach unless you have an arrangement with them. You have to be a licensed photographer with them. There’s two places in the country that don’t need to hire people to photograph their golf courses, and that’s Bandon and Pebble, because everybody already wants to go out there and take photos. I would say, probably 90 percent of the prints I sell on my website are from Bandon and Pebble. And of that 90 percent, probably 70 percent is Pebble. And of that 70 percent, the seventh hole is the biggest seller by far. With all the other courses, they hire me to come shoot. How much time I spend there really depends on what they want. Courses sometimes have a certain number of holes they want to be shot, something like nine or 10 holes. And for that I usually reserve at least three days, just to be sure. … Sometimes people will just hire me to come out for a couple days and just shoot whatever. It all just depends. Sometimes it takes longer because of weather concerns or whatever.

What does your day look like when you’re out there?

No. 6 at Old Head Golf Links in Ireland (Courtesy of Evan Schiller)

I’m out there early, before sunrise. The first two hours are the best. Twenty minutes after sunrise, that next hour is probably the best. And then again in the evening.

So you’re plotting out in advance which holes are sunrise holes and which are sunset holes?

No. 3 at California Golf Club in San Francisco (Courtesy of Evan Schiller)

You got it. I use a Sunseeker app that tells you where the sun is. So I usually like to arrive early enough on the first day at a course so I can scout the course and shoot some, because it gives me a real good sense of things. And I have to coordinate with the superintendent, because his crews are out there working. I can get some sense of where I can shoot that afternoon, and then that gives me a really good sense of where I can shoot the next morning.

What would be one of things about your job that would surprise people the most? Some of the things people wouldn’t know you have to take into consideration or have to deal with in photography?

No. 6 at Naples National in Florida (Courtesy of Evan Schiller)

I think a couple things. I think there’s a prevailing thought among some people, not everybody but some people, that I just go around taking pictures of golf courses. Which on one level that’s true, but they think I just show up at these golf courses and take pictures. One guy said, “So what do you do, just take pictures of golf courses?” And I told him, “Well, yes and no.” I don’t know if they realize that there’s a lot of front-ending and preparation prior to the shoot, a lot of back and forth with the client on exactly what they want. I always like to ask the people at the course, what are you going to use the pictures for? Sometimes they want all 18 holes, and I say “Ok, sure, but what are you going to use it for?” Sometimes people want all 18 holes shot and I do it, then they never use half of it. I think people are not aware of all the planning and coordination that goes into everything before I ever shoot a course. Contracts, dates, coordinating with the superintendents, the scouting ahead of time. There’s a lot of planning that goes into it. People ask me, “Do you play golf at all those courses?” And I say to them that I do sometimes, but oftentimes I don’t have a lot of downtime when I shoot. I’m up early to do a shoot, then I come back and maybe eat breakfast and charge batteries – I need to charge the drone and the batteries for my regular camera. And I have to download photos, everything after every session, and I go through all the shots just to make sure it all looks right and nothing went haywire. Then I go back out later. So playing 18 holes during a shoot can be challenging. Late spring and summer, depending on where you’re going, it can be light until 10 at night. You’re up at 4 or 4:30 in the morning, then I’m eating dinner at 5 p.m. because I have to eat before I go out and shoot more at sunset. And you’re not going to bed before midnight. So those are pretty long days.

You have a lot of different formats you sell your photos in, and the newer styles of metal prints are really cool. How long have you been selling the metal prints?

No. 8 of The Olympic Club's Lake Course in California (Courtesy of Evan Schiller)

I would say four or five years. They just really became popular four or five years ago. I do it with a lab out in California call Bay Photo. I would say most of the prints I sell are just on regular photographic paper, and there’s a couple different papers I use that have different looks. There’s a new paper I think I’m going to start offering. Do you remember sepia chromes? So, I used to print a lot of sepia chromes, because they just look like a piece of glass. But then they stopped making those. The depth of color was just cool. Fuji has come out with a new paper called Fuji Flex, which looks like sepia chrome and is much easier to manage, and it’s a digital print. So I started printing those for a while, then I stopped. But I just got some samples of the new ones, and it’s just like a piece of glass. But it’s a lot more expensive process, and people have to understand why so they can appreciate it. People are becoming a lot more familiar with the metal prints. I would say it’s 25 percent of sales, versus just a regular photographic print. They do cost more, but you have to think, when you buy a print on regular paper, then you have to have it framed and it can end up costing just as much or more than a metal print. One thing I always advice people, if they are going to get something framed, get really good glass to cut out some reflection. The really good glass is worth it. Don’t try to take a shortcut on the glass.

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