Taken with a Canon EOS Rebel XSI and Tamron AF 18-270mm lens. 55mm f13 1/320

This is the twelfth in a series on ways to feed your golf addiction in the off-season:

Browse and Organize Your Golf Photos

I take a camera with me on every round—and you should, too. There’s always a great picture or two waiting, and it’s a great way to remember warmer days during the off season.

On most rounds, I take my Canon EOS Rebel Xsi with a 18-55mm lens and a polarizing filter. It fits very comfortably into one of the side pockets of my golf bag. At other times, it’s the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS1, which is much smaller and actually pocketable.

Over the summer, I accumulate many hundreds of shots from the courses I play. Along with my scorecards and notes, they serve as the memory of my golfing life. Most of those photos are landscapes, but I also get quite a few wildlife photos and what I call “golf illustrations”—photos of the mundane: rakes, balls, rows of carts lined up and the like.

The offseason, then, is my opportunity to sort, edit and organize all of those shots. My tool of choice for that is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2. It’s the little brother of Adobe Photoshop in terms of photo retouching, but with organizing tools built in. One of the best features is the ability to rate and tag photos. That lets me search for, and easily find photos when I need them later.

A good many of the photos I take end up here on Golf Blogger. Others find their way on my computer screen as wallpapers and screensavers, into the GolfBlogger Michigan Calendar, and onto note cards that I make on my printer.

But mostly, they’re just a lot of fun to look at on cold wintry days as a way to feed my golf addiction.

I recently “published” a book of photography called Deb’s Garden: Three Seasons In A Michigan Garden. It’s 56 pages of photos from Mrs. GolfBlogger’s garden, taken with my Canon Xsi, and (mostly) a Canon 100mm Macro lens. I’m proud to say that I’ve been getting a lot of “oohs” and “aahs” over the book—although admittedly mostly from friends and relatives. You can get a copy at the link above.

I’ve also got a Michigan Golf Calendar for sale, with pretty photos of twelve different Michigan courses.

Proceeds, of course, go to offset the costs of running the site.

Still, its the first in what I hope to be a long series of photo collections. I’m thinking about what my next theme will be.

TITLEIST Cart Mitts

The other night we were are the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village for their annual Christmas Nights, walking from building to building, taking a look at the historic homes collected there, and their period Christmas decorations. I, of course, took a lot of photos. It was a very cold night, though, and every photo required me to shed the mittens before snapping a shot. It occurred to me that what I really needed was a pair of mittens that easily pull back for finger operation.

These Titleist Cart Mitten would work as well for photographers as they do for golfers. You simply slide them back, and your fingers through. If you have a pair of those high tech liner gloves underneath, your digits should remain toasty warm.

Photo taken with a Canon EOS Rebel XSI. f7.1, 1/100, iso100

We’re experiencing a bit of an Indian Summer here in Michigan, with daytime temperatures reaching nearly sixty degrees. Last year at this time, we were shivering in some pretty hostile weather. So I’m enjoying it while I can. This photo is the second hole at Green Oaks golf course in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Photo taken with a Canon EOS Rebel XSi, F7.1, 1/100 sec., 100 ISO.