David Cannon | Peter Millar

F"Focus on the eyes. Try to fill the frame.” Two simple pieces of advice set the career of golf’s most accomplished photographer in motion. And it continues to carry him to this day.

To understand the breadth of David Cannon’s career, you can start with the numbers. By his best estimation, he’s spent more than 6,000 nights in hotel rooms. Flown around the world 120 times. Shot more than three million frames. And walked more than 15,000 miles covering golf tournaments.

You could also measure it in output. When he began shooting, you might get four frames per second in ideal conditions. These days, 120 fps is normal. Where he once planned to capture 360 frames in a full day of shooting, he does ten times that in just the morning. In the beginning, his images would often take three days from the time they were captured until they reached an audience. Today, with about 15 seconds of transfer time from the field, they’re out to the world on the Getty site almost instantaneously.

For David, though, none of this feels like work at all. From processing film in his garden shed to the grandest stages in golf, it’s all been inspired by a steadfast passion, for the game and the art of photography itself.

A scratch player in his younger years, David was immersed in the sport at an early age. “As a two-year-old, I was breaking windows in my family’s sitting room,” he says. “So golf’s been part of my life from the word ‘go.’”

Although he competed regionally, once he saw the standard of fellow Englishman, Sir Nick Faldo, he quickly understood that’d he’d be on the outside looking in at the very highest level. So he started with a “real” job, selling nylon bedding for a company in Leicester. It held his attention briefly, mostly because it still left him plenty of time to play golf. But boredom began to set in, and the camera was calling.

The professional side of things started with another sport entirely. At a rugby match in Leicester with his mentor Neville Chadwick (source of the eye-focus and frame-filling advice), he snapped a few photos with Neville’s equipment. Neville found one shot to be particularly good, and ended up submitting it under his own name, since David was not yet officially a professional. It ended up on the cover of the Daily Express.

As David’s skills improved, his confidence grew, and he was soon jetting off to far-off destinations to cover everything from World Cup qualifying to the Olympic Games. And in 1984, two shots taken only a few weeks apart would set the stage for the rest of his career, and continue to be cornerstones of his photographic legacy.

At the Los Angeles Olympics, Carl Lewis was the headliner. As a junior photographer, David initially wanted to capture the head-on perspective during the long jump that had all his many colleagues grappling for position. When he noticed how crowded that area was becoming, he decided to use his English accent to his advantage and charmed his way onto the track. And then the magic happened.”

“I sat against the wall directly parallel to the runner, and I used my 135 F2 lens wide open because it was twilight at that stage,” he says. “I just held my breath and panned with Carl as he came running up. The very best frame of that sequence, the hands and fingers are all blurred, but his eyes are sharp, both feet are off the ground, and it’s got an amazing form to it. I’m very proud that that picture has become one of the top ten Olympic pictures of all time.”

David’s childlike love of golf comes through clearly no matter the subject. Mention Seve Ballesteros, though, and he lights up in a totally unique way. “The most important sportsman in my life, by accident or by sheer good chance,” he says.

“Those split seconds of life that I capture are an amazing record of the sport I love.”

A consummate showman, a vibrant and sometimes cantankerous character, and a generational wizard with a club in his hand, Seve was already a star before the 1984 Open Championship at St. Andrews. But his 12-foot putt to win, and the following scene, is perhaps the most lasting memory of his entire career. As would become the norm for golf’s greatest occasions over the coming decades, it was David’s own image that immortalized it.

“I knew inside it could be a really important moment,” he says. “So, I reloaded with film, which turned out to be a major masterstroke. That celebration of his went on for at least 10 seconds on the 18th green. The best picture, the iconic moment, was right at the end, and sure enough, in the last six frames of that row was the piston fist and the big smile. I drove overnight with that film because I was so excited [to develop it].”

Seve came into David’s life through a chance pairing in 1976 at a Pro-Am at his home club. He became a legend, David’s hero, and, beyond just his favorite subject, ended up as a close friend.

The technical skills he’s built over the years are certainly a big part of his ability as a photographer. As with the greatest golfers, though, the real mastery, and the greatest advantages, come from proper preparation, putting yourself in the right positions, and executing in the heat of competition on feel and instinct. Despite all the complexities involved in being in the right place at the right time, over and over again, the way David likes to think about his own craft is exceptionally simple:

“I always say to people, ‘I’m going out to paint with light in the morning.’”

It’s exactly that sort of clarity and levity that has fostered such a long and successful career. While he’s beginning to taper down his event schedule, he still exudes the same enthusiasm, gratitude and optimism of his earliest days as a professional.

You can see it in his eyes.