West Coast & Stonebrae Classic

A fun west coast trip for a new Nationwide event, The Stonebrae Classic. The course is pretty close to my brother Don's house, so I set up camp with he and Vivian for the week. I also commandeered Don's BMW 1200RT for a few days. What a nice ride! Best media parking ever!The Big Truck is the "Mothership" of the Nationwide Tour and ops base for every event.The golf course is at the top of a mountain and
very scenic. (But a long hike!)Nationwide Tour CEO Bill Calfee manned the grill during the Pro-Am and cooked his famous pork chop sandwiches. Yum!Thursday brought the fog and a cold wind to the mountain top. Many players were wearing gloves, rainsuits and wool hats.The sun eventually came back out and it was a beautiful weekend.Sunday I got a rare treat, a chance to ride in a zeppelin airship! It's run by Airship Ventures
and is based in the bay area. It usually flies tours over downtown SanFrancisco but we got a special tour over the TPC Stonebrae.
After being driven to a field at the Oakland airport, we wait for the airship to pick us up.
It's larger than a 747 and has seating for 12 plus flight crew.Pretty modern cockpit!A great view of the Oakland sports complex.There was a great panoramic window in the rear to shoot from. Looking back at Oakland.Here's a view of the course. What a fun flight!

Bay Hill

Another exciting finish at The Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill! Tiger wins with a big birdie at the 18th hole. It was almost completely dark and I opted to crank up the iso on the Nikon D3 and take my chances. It's a little noisy, but I fared better than a lot of other shooters. Got a Nike ad out of the sequence!Here's the full frame:Even this scoring volunteer had to watch the drama unfold.

New Dial-9 photo... Again

We finally got everyone together for a new group photo. Thanks to Beth and Christy for shooting and art-directing and thanks to Andrea for making sure little Greyson didn't run off the bridge!It wouldn't be any fun without some outtakes...

Dirty Gringos at Landshark Cafe

We caught our friends the Dirty Gringos at the Landshark in Jax Beach. I brought the Nikon D3 to test it out in low light. I shot everything at 6400 iso and it looked great. Oh, and we had a lot of fun too!

New Dial-9 photo

I was playing around with some Dial-9 photos for our new promo kit. Thanks to Alan Smith for the great shots!

West Palm

I drove to West Palm the week of the Honda Classic to shoot some fun stuff.
First was the TOUR Wives Charity Golf tournament. The wives played golf and the players caddied for them. It was a lot of fun and everyone had a great time.
Jeff Maggert and Brad Faxon watch the ladies warm up.
Jonathan Byrd dutifully marks golf balls for his wife
It just not South Florida without seeing Cranes and Byrds at play!
OK, bad pun... SorryThis group did a little wardrobe planning, no?
Best dressed, and "Most Honest".
At about 1 AM I was awakened by the most loudest, most obnoxious noise which had me peeling myself off the ceiling! Fire alarm... Great.
The WPFD showed up to check things out and then cleared us to go back to sleep. yeah right!My next assignment was to shoot a portrait of TOUR Rules Official Brad Fabel.
Brad is known for an incident at THE PLAYERS Championship in 1998 when a seagull picked his ball off the 17th green and then flew off dropping the ball in the water.
Here is the first portrait.I thought the shot was lacking something...My final assignment was to photograph Camilo Villegas. The scheduling was tricky and I finally got him for about 5 minutes after his pro-am round and press conference. I got about 20 frames and fortunately they looked pretty good.

The Big Island of Hawaii

Tuesday after Sony, we flew over to the Big Island so I could cover the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai. This is by far my favorite event of the year. It's a limited field event and it's held at one of the most beautiful resorts in the islands.
This year was to be the best yet, because we were able to stay at the Four Seasons. This made my life much easier because I could work from the room and we were near all the events I had to shoot.
When we checked in, we were taken to our room... Just off the 18th green!I could throw a golf ball to the green from here.Very comfy.We caught up with our friends Michelle and Chad.And enjoyed a gorgeous sunset from the clubhouse .Beth and Lisa up to no good...Wednesday was the first of two Pro-Ams, and I hit the course to gather some frames.
Gary Player was entertaining a group of Japanese photographers with his Sumo wrestler impression.The Mitsubishi logo looked great against the blue sky and green grass.
Bernhard Langer did an interview with the Golf Channel... Love that shirt!The 17th hole has a great lava/shell sign by the ocean.
Lisa and Aaron relax after a long day... Lisa relaxed so hard, she almost fell out of her chair!Another beautiful sunset with my beautiful wife!Aaron plays with his food... This is the money you could save with Maui Jim!What a good-looking group!Nope, no one had any fun...
Oh yeah, there was a golf tournament too. The course is built on an old lava field.Tom Kite hits on the 17th hole while his caddie Sandy Jones looks onBernhard Langer wears an other great shirt.
On his way to the win!Hawaiian dancers entertain at the trophy ceremony. It was a nice way to end our trip.