Behind The Shot - Golf Series / Putting

You will find a bunch of Golf photos in my Active & Action Portfolio at christianbrecheis.com. These photos were produced using all kinds of lightning and gear. They have one consistency though: the action is real!
Here we avoided the usual images which often are over-posed, people waiving on the green with clubs over head and the bags all over the place. We paid attention to the 'details' the actual active golfer minds in order to create authentic photos.

Let's have a look on the putting photo of my Portfolio:

Pretty simple light set up, just to achieve fill in and to separate the subject to the backdrop a bit more.

What makes this image interesting is the shifted depth of field. It draws a line from the foreground - the hole to where the ball is, to the player. This is no Photoshop, it's done by using a so called tilt shift lens.

Getting a shot like this done requires planning and communication with the athlete. Moreover since the putting is real, timing was a big issue as well to capture the ball in the right spot.

So why not just set the whole thing up? Simple: because you won't get real emotions! Just check out the photo below, one frame later, when the ball actually went in. Priceless!

(click on the images to enlarge)