playing and taking photographs .

Alan Bradley's pictures . . .for he is a world famous course photographer (more of an artist really) . . . appear almost daily in all the national golf magazines in America and he is a regular contributor to coffee-table books such as Nicklaus by Design and Golf Digest's Top-100 Courses.

Readers of golf magazines will have seen his work also in major advertisement campaigns for companies such as Titleist, Spalding Worldwide and Taylormade. If there were a world ranking system for golf photographers he would be right up there.

Bradley was born in Cork and studied law at UCC before emigrating to America in the 1970s and putting his BCL to one side in order to teach lawn bowling in New Hampshire. Sport was in his veins but he had no idea where this would lead him.

By 1977 he had moved to California and began studying at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, armed with little more than a dream and a lot of determination.

In July 1980, he graduated with a BA in Photography and for the next 15 years photographed everything from cars and computers to clothes and food for the advertising community.

By the mid-1990s it dawned on him that, while he enjoyed what he did, it was devoid of passion. Golf beckoned. At first he photographed products for advertisements but this was too much like what had gone before. Then, he gained press credentials and photographed several tournaments, but quickly ruled out that avenue . . . which is a dogeat-dog atmosphere.

Fame eventually came after a friend secured access to a couple of courses in the San Diego area. His first course was Aviara and the pictures were so good the director of golf hired him to photograph the course not once, but twice, over the next two years. His first commission, and he was hooked.

"Finally, " he says, " I found something I wanted to do when I grew up." And his excitement shows in his work as he has displayed an unerring eye for place and mood as his focus on light and the surrounding natural environment consistently produces images that evoke a mood even non-golfers find attractive and compelling.

Of course, it is not all glamour . . . the travel and the hours are quite remarkable. The best landscape pictures are taken when the sun is rising or setting and the low light accentuates every fold and movement in the land. So, he is to be found sitting on a sand dune as early as 4am waiting for that first glimmer of light and as late as 11pm in the hope that the sun might give one last smile.

On a recent visit to Dublin he shared some of his pet thoughts and hates relating to his profession:

Flying is no fun anymore.

Nobody wants to talk to you.

If you so much as order a drink the stewardess looks at you as if you're an alcoholic or have designs on the captain's reinforced door.

I have been in position for an hour. I have three minutes of sunshine left on the green and some lone golfer chooses this moment to hit four balls into it.

How the local professional, thousands of miles from my base, can never give an accurate time for sunrise. I have spent a lot of hours sitting in the dark awaiting the sun because the professional thinks dawn is two hours before it actually is.

People asking which is my favourite course. It's like asking, "Who was your favourite ex-girlfriend"?

Moods? Yes, moods and tones, hues and shadows are his stock in trade and he caresses them all beautifully from the brightly lit mountains and flora of the Arizona desert to the subdued lighting on an Irish links. Masterpiece after masterpiece is the result and many believe he is a grandmaster of his art.