Meet Dave Sansom: Professional golf course and landscape photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dave Sansom and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dave, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
I’ve pursued creative endeavors my entire adult life because I have no choice. The bottom line has never been my bottom line, so the questionable economics of pursuing a creative career were never an issue for me. I just had a need to create something that would not have existed unless I created it.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’ve always supported myself, though sometimes fairly poorly, with creative endeavors. I began my creative path in 1971, as a hippy leather craftsman in Texas, selling my work at craft fairs. I later moved to Colorado, where I also sold my work to shops in resort towns. I moved to Atlanta in 1975 and began building hardwood furniture, again selling at art shows and craft fairs. One of my coffee tables from that period is in Georgia’s State Art Collection. In 1978 I shifted gears, stopped building furniture and joined rock band, Ziggurat, as lead singer and writer. Over the next 3 years, we recorded two albums,(Yes, albums. This was pre-CD) toured the eastern part of the country extensively and never had any real success. We also managed to destroy the marriages of the 4 of us who were married when we started making records. Music is a great creative form, but a lousy lifestyle. When I left Ziggurat in 1981, I bought some recording gear and kept writing songs. Great fun, but no success at all. But in 1985, I remarried, my new wife and I bought a home and I built a recording studio in our basement. Initially, I used it for writing songs, but pretty quickly I found myself producing audio programming for businesses. I did everything from on-hold messaging to broadcast advertising, but had significant success with a service called Audio Billboard that I developed for use at trade shows. For about 8 years, Audio Billboard grew, but I was unhappy with the partners I had who managed the sales and on-site work with trade shows and, essentially, shut it down around 2001. I maintained other audio production clients for another year or so, but when I had an auto accident that damaged my ears, it was time to find another line of work. The next few years were a challenge. I had to completely reinvent myself, but I had no clear idea how to do it. It was during this time that Tom Brown began encouraging my photographic pursuits, and while I continued working on photos, it wasn’t until 2011 that I actually sold any. In February, it snowed in Atlanta. I called Tom, who was a member at Atlanta Country Club, and asked him to meet me at the club. I wanted to walk the course to see if I could capture some good shots of it under a snowy blanket. I was very happy about my edit of one of the images from that morning… a snow-covered image of the signature 13th hole… and had a 20X30 print done. I framed it and asked Tom to take it to the pro shop at the club to get their thoughts. They loved it, hung it on the wall, and sold it in short order. It was the first photograph I ever sold, and it meant the world to me. The pro shop folks asked for another… then another and another. They sold several, and in the spring, the club asked me to photograph the entire course. Over that next year, the pro shop at Atlanta Country Club sold almost $10,000 worth of my photographs. Now I was truly hooked! My golf course photography business is doing very well these days. It’s a great gig. I photography from coast to coast in the US, have photographed courses in China, including Hong Kong Golf Club, and have also shot 4 courses in Iceland. But photography is a wide open creative avenue, and when I’m not photographing golf courses, I photograph landscapes. I always look for non-golf landscapes when I’m on a golf course project, but I’ve also made trips across the country to shoot landscapes, and my two photo trips to Iceland were actually intended as landscape shooting trips. The golf courses were added as an afterthought. So if anyone wonders what my profession is, it’s photography. If you’re curious about what my favorite hobby is, it’s photography. Given the long and winding road I’ve followed over my lifetime, the most important thing I’ve learned is that I have no choice but to create… something. Thankfully, with photography, I’ve found my happy place. I love the creative form and I love the lifestyle. I love the field work and I love the editing in the studio. I also truly enjoy the folks I’ve had the opportunity to work with. If I hadn’t found photography, I would probably be trying some other creative venture. But I have no need or interest at this point. Photography is where I belong. A creative’s path is not one I’d recommend to anyone who’s not absolutely driven to create. It’s not an easy way to make a living. But if you have to, you have to. I’ve had to.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’m a bit of a solitary sort. You won’t find me in bars or clubs any more. Good restaurants are another story. I love a good restaurant. But when good friends visit… if they enjoy golf… I have lots of ideas. And due to the way I make a living I have some great connections at clubs that aren’t always available to non-members. In Metro Atlanta, the list is long. Just name some of the area’s top private clubs and the chances are I’ve done some photography for them. In most cases, I would be able to get myself and my best friend on. Outside Metro Atlanta, my first choice is McLemore, near Cloudland Canyon. A spectacular property and great folks. In Alabama? The Ledges. No doubt. North Carolina? Linville Golf Club and Eseeola Lodge is a remarkable place. The list goes on. I’ve photographed hundreds of clubs, so… If I’m not on a golf course with my friend, chances are we’d be at my home, sharing a good chardonnay, grilling some steaks. Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Success is always a driven, to an extent, by relationships, but in the golf industry relationships are crucial. And two people stand out as the ones who started me down this road. The first is Tom Brown, a now-retired, legendary independent golf rep. The second is Scott Pool, a protege of Pete Dye, an excellent golf course designer in his own right and the developer of GreenScan 3D, a scanning service used by top golf courses across the USA and beyond. As I sought a new career after an auto accident resulting in hearing issues caused me to give up on my audio production business, there was nobody more important to my photo efforts than Tom Brown. As I explored different avenues for my next career, my good friend Tom got me involved with GolfBuddy… a golf GPS company he represented… to map golf courses in the Southeast. I mapped courses for GolfBuddy for about 6 months, and I started carrying a camera with me because I was visiting some beautiful landscapes. I’d snap a shot here and there, and share them with Tom when I got home. Tom had spent his entire working life in golf, and I assumed he knew what he was talking about. When he would encourage me with praise for my images, it made me work harder. During that time I decided to do something somewhat structured, and reached out to about 20 of the 250 courses I had mapped for GolfBuddy, asking if I could photograph their properties, write a bit about them and include them on a web site I wanted to create, called Hidden Fairways. Since there was no obligation or cost to them, they all agreed! Funny how that worked. So by the time the web site was complete, I had photographed my first 20 golf courses! I was hooked. During this same time period, another friend in the golf business introduced me to Scott Pool, a golf course architect and creator of GreenScan 3D, a service he developed using Lidar scanning technology to accurately map golf course greens complexes so when a club needs to rebuild their greens, they can recreate their greens perfectly. Scott hired me to build two web sites for him… one for his golf course design business and one for GreenScan 3D. It’s not clear to either one of us whose idea it was, but since I was building his web sites and had a camera, I photographed 4 of his 5 golf courses for the sites. As it was with Tom Brown, having the encouragement of someone who had spent his working life in the golf industry meant the world to me.

Website: https://www.davesansomphotography.com
Instagram: #davesansomphotography
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davesansomgeorgia/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davesansomphotography

Image Credits
All images are Copyright Dave Sansom 2019-2020