I was commissioned by the Denarau Golf & Racquet Club to take a series of photos of the courses on the holiday island of Denarau. This island is flat as a pancake as it is reclaimed land from the ocean. Difficult to get any kind of elevation on shots which was one challenge.

The other challenge was rain, rain, rain and then some more rain! Maureen and I were there for 4 days (arrived on Tuesday) and it rained torrentially for 3 1/2 days. Not what you want when you are trying to capture images of what is supposed to be an ideal sunshine laden golfing destination.

The rain was so heavy it caused localised flooding and the golf course had a lot more water hazards than it does normally. Bunkers were washed out, fairways were water laden and all in all the scene did not look very promising.

We reviewed the weather forecast and saw that Thursday had the possibility of being an ok day with some sunshine forecast. We planned that Thursday would be the main day to capture images of the golf course. To create a bit of elevation in the shots (needed to give an overall better view of the golf course) the golf club hired the only cherry picker on the island of Denarau which was on a trailer that was dragged around by a 4WD.

The next challenge was going to be to identify where to take images and we needed to plan for this a lot more than I do normally. Generally when I do a photo shoot I get a feel for the golf course by driving around and where the best images might be but I use that as a guide only. When it comes to taking the shots I look at what the sun is doing and the composition of the shot is framed according to how it looks at the time.

In the case of Denarau and the use of a cherry picker we needed to plan a lot more because for every spot we stopped at there was a 2 or 3 minute setup exercise to get the cherry picker in place (and safe).

We picked a number of positions on the golf course and prepared for Thursday.

Thankfully when the morning arrived the weather looked OK. The clouds and rain which had been covering the island had started to break up and we could see glimpses of blue sky. A good start! Clint Southall (Course Superintendent of Denarau) and myself then started to make our way around the course.