Most of us carry cameras on the golf course these days, but that alone doesn’t make us photographers.
I certainly don’t qualify as one, and I have a large collection of photographs to prove it. I take pictures on my cellphone almost everywhere I play. Almost without exception, those snapshots fail to capture what I’m trying to convey, whether it’s the thrill of a particular moment or the enduring beauty of the grounds. A shoddy shooter, I have the rare ability to make even a stunning coastal course look no more special than a scruffy backyard muni.
And yet I know good photography when I see it, and I see it in the work of Jon Cavalier.
Cavalier is the keen-eyed photographer and architecture obsessive behind @linksgems, an Instagram account with more than 120,000 followers and a vast archive from some of the world’s most spectacular courses. It’s an ever-expanding digital storehouse that Cavalier has been building for the past 15 years. He joined me to discuss it on a recent episode of the Destination Golf podcast.
Photography is Cavalier’s passion but it’s not his profession. He earns his living as an attorney. He’s also a relative latecomer to golf. As a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, he focused on baseball, which he played at St. John’s University. His first encounter with golf came years later through a corporate outing. A few shots in, Cavalier was hooked. The challenge was alluring. So was the landscape, an aesthetic interest that surged a few rounds later when Cavalier found himself at Sleepy Hollow, the C.B. Macdonald/Seth Raynor classic in New York. He started taking pictures and never looked back.
In those early days, Cavalier knew little about private club culture. He had to learn the protocols around requesting access, on-course comportment and other subtleties of etiquette. But his naivety turned out to be an asset. One of his methods was to cold-call prestigious clubs, express his genuine interest in their architecture, and politely ask for access, which, often as not, he received.
Along the way, he refined his style. In addition to its vibrant colors and compelling composition, Cavalier’s work is defined by a signature restraint: his course images almost never include people. He thinks of himself as a landscape photographer, and not so much an artist as a documentarian of other people’s art.
Away from the fairways, two of his other great loves are Gracie and Maddie, his Labrador retrievers, both of whom make frequent cameos in his feed and have earned a devoted cult following among his loyal audience. That affection for dogs also fuels another project: an annual LinksGems calendar, proceeds from which go to animal charities. To date, Cavalier has raised more than $500,000.
He launched @linksgems at an opportune moment, just as Instagram was gaining steam and emerging as a major force in how golfers discover and discuss the game. Now, with a robust following and the game in a period of unprecedented growth, Cavalier works to document as much of it as he can, from the Golden Age classics to the wave of modern designs proliferating around the world.
He’s on the go a lot. How he balances that travel with his day job made good fodder for conversation, as did a range of other topics, including his methodology, his thoughts on what separates a memorable golf photograph from a forgettable one, and his take on the rise of drone photography and what it’s done — for better and worse — to the way we see courses. He also offered some advice for the cellphone-wielding amateurs among us. Which is to say, he offered some advice for me.
If you’ve ever stopped mid-round to fumble with your phone and wondered why the resulting image looks nothing like what you’re seeing with your own eyes, this episode is for you.
