Evan Schiller: I had no clue when I started, I was just playing golf you know. I mean, actually, when I grew up when I was in elementary school and maybe the first parts of high school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I had a room full of pets, fish rabbits durables, I had it, it was like wall to wall. I mean, it was like a pet store in my room. I thought that’s what I was gonna I was gonna go to Cornell veterinary school. And then I started playing golf. Actually, I played competitive tennis before to play golf, I was actually probably better at tennis than I was a golf. And then I met a couple guys in the high school golf team. And they said, we wanted to play on the team. And I tried out, I got on and that’s, you know, when I started playing more and more in high school, college, that’s when I thought, Okay, well, yeah, maybe I can do this thing a shot. And even when I graduated from college, I mean, I wasn’t a great college player. I was okay. It was, I would say average. I didn’t really think I was good enough to make, you know, make a living at it. But my father pushed me and he goes, well, you know, give it a try. You know, if you don’t do it now, you know, you’re not going to get down the road 10 years, and it’s going to be too late, or you’re going to regret at least give it a try. So I did. I started you know, I remember sending in the app I played, I played a lot of amateur golf, a lot of amateur tournaments. And I remember sending in filling out the application to go to tour qualifying that. It was the end of that summer that I had my first summer after I graduated from college. And so that’s kind of how it all started.

Mackenzie Mack: Awesome. So what was your best memory as a professional golfer?

Evan Schiller: There was two of them. One was when I went to a local met area tournament the Westchester Open was at Westchester Country Club. And I remember coming up the last hole I was I think it was in the last group. I was paired with two of the best players in the area. And I had about two putts about 35 feet. And I knocked the first one like six inches downhill and around like the first one six or seven feet pass and your heart’s racing. And I was like all those people around the green watch and yeah, and I remember making the plot and I remember hear my mother yell at me. And I just remember my father was there and my best friend was there. You know, a lot of my friends were there. And so that was like to the first tournament as a professional like one. The second one was when I qualify for the US Open and Shinnecock and I remember coming home and telling my father and he couldn’t believe it. So I don’t know, he may have enjoyed it more than I did being there, you know, going out there Shinnecock they rented a house. So it was funny. 

Mackenzie Mack: Well, there’s some awesome memories for sure. So after those playing days, how did you transition from playing to taking pictures?

Evan Schiller: While I was still playing tournament golf, I got a camera. Because there we were playing out in the desert in California was the California Open in the Palm Springs area. And after the tournament, somebody said to us, you know, you guys should go play this new course down the road at PGA West is the stadium course, they built the stadium course similar to the one they have at [inaudible 00:05:42], you guys should have played, it’s supposed to be really good. So my buddy and I went out there and played it. And I remember walking down the 9th hole. And there was a Pete Dye course the hole went around this lake, at the railroad ties, and it was a backdrop of this incredible mountain. And the water was still so it was this perfect reflection of the mountain in the water. I mean, the wonder that the hole is actually called reflection. And I remember seeing this and didn’t have phones, then you could just snap a picture didn’t have cell phones. So I said, you know what I need to bring start bringing a camera with me. So it was after that trip, I went home and bought a camera. And just for kicks just started, I brought a camera with me and started taking photos and give it to my buddies. I remember my room in addition to all the pets around there, I had photos of all the golf courses I played all across the top of the wall. And then when I was I worked at WestJet, at sorry, at Quaker ridge, and then I moved on to work at Westchester and a friend of mine suggested that I start selling photos in the pro shop, because I’ve been taking some photos, of course, and I laughed and I thought that was a joke, like who’s gonna buy these things? So we put a few in the pro shop and some soul and that was it and kind of took off from there. I look back at those photos now, I won’t carry them now.

Mackenzie Mack: Don’t tell anybody.

Evan Schiller: I’m not gonna give the people who bought them their money back.

Mackenzie Mack: I completely understand. So on our show, we like to share like the different, unique jobs. And being a golf photographer is a unique job in the industry that most people is not even on most people’s radar. So I want to dive in a little bit into the actual role and what your day looks like as a photographer. What’s your typical day?

Evan Schiller: If I go to a shoot, so I get there early. I’ll check into my hotel, I’ll go to the golf course, talk to the superintendent, then I’ll go out and scout the course and make it a point to know the course really well. You know where you know what holes or where? Shortcuts to get around. So you know, make the best of my time make. You know, I take notes, I have this little app called Sun seeker that tells me where the sun is at different times of the day. So I can kind of estimate, okay, I want to shoot this hole this time, this hole this time from this angle. And then when it gets to that point where the light starts the good, I’ll shoot do my thing, then I usually will touch base, you know, I may go get something to eat afterwards. But I also touch base with the superintendent and say, Hey, I shot these holes this afternoon here are the ones, I want to do in the morning. Okay, so they will either you know have their guys stay off or have a go out early and get the coin or prep the holes for me. Then after a shoot in the morning, you know, I may go grab some breakfast, I go back to the hotel, I gotta charge batteries for my camera for my drone download images. I go through them just to check I may edit a few posts a few on site on social media. You know, by the time I go through all that, you know, I may have to return some phone calls. I gotta go back to the golf course. Let’s go and if there’s time, you know, I’ll play a few holes but lots of times it’s pretty involved. I don’t have a lot of time of time. And that’s you know, I do that for two or three days on a shoot and I head home and while I’m home a lot of it’s spent you know what if I’ve been on shoots, you spent editing, editing photos, so I can get them back to the client. That’s my day in a nutshell what I’m shooting when I’m on the road.

Mackenzie Mack: Awesome. So for the people that are listening that just have an iPhone, and we’re out on the golf course. What tip do you have for us to take our golf course selfies and make a good photo on our phone?

Evan Schiller: So I haven’t taken a lot of. I never went to photography school and ever took a lot of photography lessons. I had one buddy who was a photographer, not a golf course photographer. And he said something to me one point that is stay with me for a long time. As a photographer, you are responsible. It’s like you look through the viewfinder. You are responsible for everything in that frame, make it interesting. He goes would consider that you’re taking, you know what’s gonna, you know, at the time it was film, you’re taking something that you’re putting onto a piece of film that’s very small or that now it’s, you know, a sensor of really small sensor, you’re taking a life size scene and putting it to there, and then somebody’s gonna look at it on their phone, or they’re gonna look on the computer, which is much smaller than life size. So you have to take that in consideration. So I always took it to heart to pay attention to the whole frame. Like what’s going on is like, the lower right, interesting is the lower left is the upper right, is it does it balance? You know, I know there’s this rule of thirds people talk about, which means, you know, should have 1/3 sky, 1/3 the middle one, you know, I follow it, but not, you know, it depends. But I would say, make it interesting, but also consider that if you stand in the middle of fairway, and you take a photo at ground level, half of that frame is going to be a fairway is going to be fairway and the other half is going to be sky. And it’s probably not going to be the most interesting thing in the world. So there probably needs to be something close in the foreground to make it interesting, like some grass or a bunker, getting up on a mat, like on a golf cart, getting height helps, because all of a sudden, now you go up and now the now you don’t have a ton of foreground with you know, just it’s just grass. So getting up high, some elevation helps like a mountain, the golf cart, I mean, people, you know, sometimes people take their drone to the course, you know, they got an A golf bag. So they do that, that’s probably the best, you know, the best thing is just, you know, take into account the whole frame making interesting, or get some elevation. And you know, there’s also phones, now we’re in sometimes you may just need to crop it to make it more interesting. You know, I had a guy send me a photo he goes, what do you think about this? I said, “Well, if he moved up 20 yards and put that bunker on the front of the frame, it might have been a lot more interesting”. As far as selfies, I don’t do a ton of selfies I know a lot of people do. But lots of times when you do a selfie, the frame is filled up with people, the rest of it doesn’t really matter that much. Because it’s the whole frame is filled up with people. But if it’s just two people, I would say, you know, make the background interesting you know.

Mackenzie Mack: Gotcha, those are great tips. So I’ll be sending you my next golf course photo from my phone from your tips. So you mentioned at home, how your day is a little bit different. So how much computer knowledge you have to have to be a photographer, because there’s editing and all of those things that you mentioned. So how much computer knowledge you have to have?

Evan Schiller: First of all, is such certain software that you have to get a handle on, you know, like Lightroom, or Photoshop, or, you know, if you’re doing video, it’s, you know, I use Adobe Premiere, you know, and then there’s also After Effects, and there’s all these different software’s that you can use to enhance, you know, edit your photos. So knowing all that stuff, you know, I have the whole what’s called the Adobe Suite. And as all these different software, it’s a whole package that you can use to edit photos and video. So I think also being able to use a file transfer application to send huge files I use, we transfer you know, just the workings of your computer, you know, your internet, you know, your storage, you know, where you’re going to store all this stuff. I mean I used to have tons of external hard drives, and now I’ve recently condensed it into one and I just got another upgraded to another one, which is works wirelessly so I can access it from anywhere. I’ll spare you all the technical stuff, but just, you know, knowing how to use that and the different applications with regard to that. So there’s quite a bit.

Mackenzie Mack: So do you think that you your golfing background helps with your photo taking? Do you think your knowledge and your passion for the game helps?

Evan Schiller: Yes, absolutely. I think not just from playing but working in the golf industry. So I played tournament golf, but I also worked in the golf industry. So I saw it from both sides. I saw it from the playing aspect I saw it from you know the from the retail aspect from you know, pro shop from you know, working on a range teaching so the workings of the golf operation. I think understanding how the whole golf operation works really helps from you know, what the head Pro does to how tee time to work, how to pace of play works to being on a golf course and being aware of where the play is because last time You got to work around it. So knowing okay, if I’m on the fifth hole, knowing Okay, well there’s a group on the third hole. But there’s nobody on the fourth hole. So I got a little time here, I can go back to the fourth hole real quick and come back here. So knowing that also know what’s really important is knowing how superintendent works and knowing their operation. So when I go speak to them, I have a knowledge of what they do and appreciation for what they do is somewhat of understanding of what they do their schedule and things like that. So you know, a lot of times they’ll go out mower fairway in the morning when it’s wet. And they’ll the mower, if it doesn’t pick up the clipping some, some guys will have the, you know, a basket on the front, they’ll pick up clippings. But others will just go into clippings will stay on the ground. So if the clipping stay on the ground, what they do is they go afterwards with a blower to blow it off. But when they do the run the blower back and forth on the fairway. It makes tracks and it doesn’t look good in the photos. Because it’s in the morning that mower but then the duel set back in or if even though it’s moist, it makes tracks and it does look for photos. So just knowing stuff like that I can speak to a superintendent ask him Oh, do you pick up the clippings when you mower, or do you blow them afterwards? So we need to work around that somehow. So just knowing that kind of stuff like that helps, really helps.

Mackenzie Mack: That makes sense. Yeah, that makes complete sense.

Evan Schiller: One of you know, 100 thing. 

Mackenzie Mack: Yeah, I’m sure. 

Evan Schiller: It’s a biggie. 

Mackenzie Mack: Yes. So you’ve photographed over 600 courses all around the world. What was your favorite shot? Can you describe to us where it was, what you shot and why you love it?

Evan Schiller: If I had to pick one. It’s the shot I took of is abandoned dunes a couple of years ago. It was morning. And it was the beginning of May. And it was a foggy, misty morning. You know, the clouds and the fog was coming off the ocean and went out to the fifth hole which runs right along the cliffs. And there the course was in bloom. So the gorse was on the cliffs was blooming yellow, yellowish orange. And I was just sat there and waited, thinking oh, maybe the sun will come out. And if it does, it’s going to be it’d be really cool because there was fog covering on the cliff background was but the golfers were coming. The golfers were coming down I could see there on the fourth tee because the fourth tee runs parallel, just about parallel to the fifth part of the fourth hole runs parallel to the fifth. And I thought well if the sun comes out this could be epic. And I noticed on the horizon to the east there was a slight little break in the clouds starting look like a break. So I launched the drum and I fluid back towards and I used a lens that not a tail. It’s kind of always a telephoto lens. So kind of would compress it. So I had a fly the drone way back towards the fourth tee. And I just hovered there over the cliff right behind the fourth, that’s the 4th green, sorry, right behind the fourth green, and just waited, hoping that my battery would last long enough. If the sun came out and that sun didn’t come out and I had like 5% of my battery and a half the land, and I could hear the golfers coming down for commenting on what is that dude, what is that a drone? Oh, what’s a drone for a man? I can hear him talking. So they’re up there putting. I really shouldn’t be flying a drone up by those guys. And I just did screw it. The sun, I mean, it literally is because I think the sun’s coming out. So it came out for literally a minute max. Maybe 30 seconds out it was but I mean, I got off maybe 10 shots, two of which the sun was out really good. The others was kind of muted a little bit, which is also nice. So that’s um, and then I just landed it went back and hit breakfast. That was it for the morning. I feel probably my favorite shot. 

Mackenzie Mack: That’s an awesome photo. I haven’t played there but definitely made it made it someplace I want to play. I’ve just seen this photo. Yeah. So for our listeners that are like so excited by everything that you’ve taught, you’ve talked about today and want to get into this what is one action you would give a beginner to take one step into this career?

Evan Schiller: I’d say just start taking photos. You know, it doesn’t have to be golf course it’s just take photos. Just take photos, and if you’re gonna if you’re gonna fly a drone, learn the rules. Learn where you’re supposed to fly. We can fly, you know, because I know there’s a lot of people out there who just take a drone and just fly it forever. I mean, I’ve almost gotten hit several times, not me, my drone has almost gotten hit several times. But it’s just, Pebble Beach, they from Pebble Beach, they’re on the beach, they fly it off the beach and just over the golf course I have had it done that becomes doomed by, so learn the rules.

Mackenzie Mack: Learn the rules. And that correlates to golf, like knowing the rules at the golf course when you’re playing. So making sure we know the drone rules are important. So I go back to your career is just so unique in the industry. So what can we do to kind of open the minds of the next generation to other careers in the industry other than teaching and working at the golf course? In your opinion? What do you think we could do as an industry to kind of open people’s minds?

Evan Schiller: I think something in the realm of the way that the game is learned. I think the way the game is learned today comes across as being hard. And I think it has a lot to do with the way it’s being learned or the way it’s being taught. I’ve given a number of golf lessons, I had a privilege of working with an organization called extraordinary golf that was started by Fred Shoemaker. So I saw another possibility for learning that. It teaches it treats people differently, it treats people like they’re completely able to create an environment where they’re free to explore and free to make mistakes without the fear of judgment, or the fear of making mistakes and making mistakes. Okay, there’s a freedom to say something about the way it’s learned today.

Mackenzie Mack: That’s fair. I think that’s a fair assessment in that it does come off as hard or unapproachable. But it’s so is, it so is and it’s so much fun. 

Evan Schiller: And I think it’s the way it’s been presented, the way it’s been taught because even though I we products are sold, it’s sold under the auspices that you, excuse my language, you suck the way you are, you need this driver, are you not dismissing equipment and not being important this way? It’s being sold. You’re not able, we need you need this guy or this woman to help you or you need this piece of equipment because you’re no good that way you are. It’s sold that way. I mean, not just call it a lot of stuff. It’s sold that well. Listen to the commercials on TV.

Mackenzie Mack: Absolutely. So we got to change that narrative. We got to change that.

Evan Schiller: You know, it’s like when Michelangelo created David, and there was a story about a little kid walked up to a went up because it I think was some sculptor anyway, in his square he was making a sculpture out of a piece of rock and every day this little kid would go up and watch him and watch him and finally he comes up like on the last day in disguise created this incredible sculpture of a lion and he says he says Mister, how did you know that lion was inside that stone? So to me learning golf isn’t same way it’s like okay, well can you create an environment with the ability and that person comes out rather than putting stuff in it putting stuff in you create an environment where the ability comes out.

Mackenzie Mack: I love that. I absolutely love that at the end of the show, we always do our quick nine questions. So off the top of the head first to come to your mind. 

Evan Schiller: Okay. 

Mackenzie Mack: For this place you’ve traveled to take the photo?

Evan Schiller: South Africa.

Mackenzie Mack: Who are the other three players in your dream foursome?

Evan Schiller: Tiger Woods, Barack Obama and my father.

Mackenzie Mack: What’s your favorite club?

Evan Schiller: Royal County Down, Ireland.

Mackenzie Mack: Cabinets print or metal print? 

Evan Schiller: Metal.

Mackenzie Mack: Music on or off on the golf course. 

Evan Schiller: Off.

Mackenzie Mack: What’s your go to snack at the turn?

Evan Schiller: I don’t usually stop at the turn. 

Mackenzie Mack: Don’t you eat anything?

Evan Schiller: I bring it with me, Banana.

Mackenzie Mack: What’s your favorite line to use with trash talk on the golf course?

Evan Schiller: Take your time.

Mackenzie Mack: Love it. Sunrise or sunset photo? 

Evan Schiller: Sunrise. 

Mackenzie Mack: Okay, last one short par five. Are you laying up? Are you going for the green? 

Evan Schiller: Going

Mackenzie Mack: Hey, I love it. Tell the people where they can get a hold of you, see your photos and connect with you?

Evan Schiller: Well, I’m on Instagram Evan_Schiller_Photography. I’m on Twitter among Evan_Schiller, evanschillerphotography.com is my website. They can find me there, they can find me on Instagram at Evan_Schiller_Photography.

Mackenzie Mack (PODCAST OUTRO): Thanks for joining us, Evan. And thank you for listening. Be sure to follow this show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, so you don’t miss an episode. I’m Mackenzie Mack, and I’ll talk with you next time on “Getting to the Green”.