In this video, we sit down with David Cannon, golf photographer and author of the new book 'Seve: His Life Through The Lens', to go through 8 incredible photos he has captured of Seve during his career and the story behind them all. David shares some great insight into what Seve was like to photograph and the relationship he had with the great man. We also learn about the new book and what it was like to go through the process of making this book, including getting access to some never-before-seen photos of Seve's family life away from the course.
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00:00Yeah, number eight. So, you know at Augusta, you're not allowed to run. I was in my usual
00:10afternoon studio, which is from behind the second shot into 13, because the light's beautiful
00:16on that hole and it's a lovely sunny afternoon. And I saw Seve hit the shot. You know, sometimes
00:23you look at a player and you see the body action afterwards and I thought, hmm, there's
00:27a chance that's gone into the water. And that year, they let the water run fairly shallow,
00:33but some years it's deep. And this year it was particularly shallow, so there was a chance
00:38of people playing out of the water. And I just thought, there's just a chance that he's
00:42got in this water. So, you know, doing my Olympic walk, as I call it, and I was lucky
00:47enough to get across the crossing on 14, because that's the other thing, we're outside the
00:51ropes at Augusta, you can't go inside the ropes. So you can often get caught at spectator
00:56crossings because players coming through. But luckily, right in, got up the back of
01:01the grandstands, we have a, you know, you can get to the back of the bleachers, as they
01:06call them in America, through access at the back for media. Got there at the top, absolutely
01:13out of breath, sweating like a pig. And, you know, to see Seve sitting on the bank getting
01:18his shoes and socks off, just, you couldn't have written it really. You look at that very,
01:23very closely at that sequence. Hawkeyes will notice that near the end of it, you'll just
01:28see the ball descending, rather look, it's not coming out, but it didn't go forward.
01:33It went up, but not forward, sadly. So it came back at his feet and I think he had to
01:38drop the next one out. What a guy to watch, because he'll take these shots on. Probably
01:44this book would not happen without COVID and lockdown, because I wouldn't have had the
01:49time to devote to it, to get it done in such a short period of time. And, you know,
01:57obviously I've remained friends with Carmen, his ex-wife, but she's always been a really
02:03good friend. And Javier, because he plays golf, he's met my son, they got on quite well.
02:09And yeah, we've kept in touch all the time. You know, I've often had lunches in London
02:15and stuff like this. And, you know, 10th anniversary was coming up of his passing.
02:22And I just saw a chance, an opportunity just to do a book that would celebrate his career
02:30in pictures, basically. And I would not have got this project off the ground without the
02:37publishers getting interested. Most of all, without the R&A and then the European tour
02:43backing me. So it's been done in three months. And I spent hours going through archives. And
02:50the Getty Archive has been incredible, because we have got so many collections on there. We've
02:55got Phil Sheldon's collections on there, Peter Daisley, all the guys who were shooting in the
03:0070s and early 80s. But I've got pictures that I've used in the book. And I've tried to use
03:08pictures from other photographers as much, you know, because I think the book is about
03:12great images of Seve. So we've dug into some other archives and having the help of the R&A
03:18and then the European tour, it's meant that we've been able to afford to buy pictures in from
03:23outside. And so hopefully, it's going to give people a full and lovely view into his life.
03:30Another thing, of course, is the family have given us access to some beautiful family shots.
03:35I always said that Seve's smile was the most magnetic smile I've ever seen in a subject.
03:41And if you see these, when you see these family pictures, which no one's seen other than the
03:45family up till now, they shine, they literally light up the pages. And yeah, what an amazing
03:55treat it is to be able to use those pictures. I've tried to do what I call a moment in time
04:00in each chapter. But they're basically my stories behind pictures, which are quite fun, I hope,
04:07to make it interesting. And then Robert's essays as well. So there's some good reading in it as
04:11well. It's not just pictures, people loved him. Bottom line, that's the way I'd put it.
04:18People love watching Seve and they love the way he played the game of golf. They love this passion,
04:23they love everything about what he gave to the game of golf. And for me, that's the thing that
04:30shines so much. That actually, we lost the 93 Ryder Cup, but this was on Saturday morning.
04:39And Seve hadn't been playing very well that year as a whole. But again, he's teamed up with Ollie
04:46and I think they won the two matches on the Friday. And this was the Saturday morning.
04:51And they won again. And for some reason, Gallagher thought his back wasn't holding up or Seve had said
04:59to him, you know, he's really struggling with his back and he didn't play him in the afternoon.
05:04And, you know, we lost by one point. What can you take from that? But the world will never know.
05:12But that picture, I just love that picture because the people in the background, you know,
05:16he held a birdie at that moment. And yeah, that was Seve. That was the reaction you always got.
05:22Yeah, the whole story is pretty amazing because that tournament, put it into context,
05:27he had just birdied, I think it was six holes in a row. Well, certainly from the 13th. So 13, 14,
05:3215, 16, five holes, he birdied in a row. And he got to within one shot of the lead.
05:39And he stands on the 18th tee, which is to a slope that is really slopey fairway. It's a
05:45really tough tee shot to stay on the fairway anyway. And sure enough, off to the right. And
05:54I mean, I thought I thought it was going to be out of bounds, but it wasn't. It was
05:59six foot from a concrete wall, which surrounds a swimming pool in Crom. And
06:07there was I went with him. A lot of people just ignored it. Even the TV crews didn't ignored it
06:13because they thought he's only going to chip this out. And if you notice, there's not a TV camera
06:17inside. There's no video of this shot ever. The only only video of it is the ball landing just
06:22short of the green. But then he he he gets on his knees, he's snorting, he's kicking the ground.
06:31Yes, he does. You know, pointing to a gap like that. And Billy Foster, his caddy, he told me
06:39he tells the story probably better than I do. But there's a great little YouTube video of what
06:45Billy said at the time. And, you know, he reckoned it was the size of a dinner plate, the hole
06:51that Sebby was aiming for. And literally, he almost almost on his knees. He's down there.
06:57He's crouching. Billy walks by me. He's got his bag. It's been sent off. I'm going for this,
07:02you know, Billy's been trying to persuade him to chip out for the last five minutes.
07:07And sure enough, there's a big explosion of pine needles and everything. No, no,
07:12I was waiting for the ball to hit the concrete wall and come towards me because the geometry
07:16that was I thought I could be in quite a bit of danger here because the angles are
07:20so I was at a right angle to him. And just waiting is that six seconds or whatever.
07:26One thing I learned from TV cameraman is that the ball is in the air for six seconds. They
07:30hit a full shot, basically a tee shot, whatever shot it is, roughly six seconds. The ball is in
07:36the air. You could count there's a little pause and then a big roar. And, you know,
07:41obviously he's got close to the green or even on the green. So I run around and you see the
07:45ball's just short of the green. And unfortunately, I didn't get quite far enough around the green
07:51before he's playing his third shot. So I was playing catch up basically. And, you know,
07:56he chipped the damn thing in for a birdie. Unfortunately, Barry Lane spoilt the story
08:01by birding 17 and 18, 16 and 17. And, you know, he didn't win. He lost by a shot. But it's one of the
08:09most incredible golf shots I've ever seen. You know, he was always fine with me. You know,
08:13I had occasions when he'd let me lie down behind him and shoo all the other photographers off,
08:18literally. So, you know, I had very, very good relationship with him, not by pushing myself
08:26at him, but I think it was just mutual trust and, you know, because I was around a lot following
08:32him. But I was still doing football at the time. So, you know, I actually, when you look,
08:38I didn't do that many tournaments that Seve played in. I did the majors and the bigger ones,
08:44but all the regular European tour events, I was usually being sent off to do football at that
08:49stage of my career. I remember those world match plays so fondly. Anyway, just, you know,
08:57I actually got a lovely picture of him on the tee on the par five, the par three fifth. And
09:03he put it in the bunker just left of the green. And that bunker shot, you know,
09:09bunker shots can be ordinary, but it's very difficult to get what I call nicely framed
09:17bunker shots, you know, where the player's in the right, the ball's up to the other side.
09:22And so it fills the frame nicely. Background's lovely. I'm always very keen on backgrounds to
09:28try and get as much out of focus. So you really isolate the subject. Golf, I keep on saying to
09:33people, you know, golf is one of the best spectator sports because you can get close to your
09:40heroes. You know, you can be eight feet from Tiger Woods playing a golf shot. Name any other sport
09:47you can get so up close in person with the great stars. You can't really. So even though you've got
09:54to walk a long way and you've got to, you know, be clever where you wait, this sort of thing.
09:58I think golf's the best sport. It's the greatest partnership in Ryder Cup history. No one will get
10:04close to what they won. What was it? 12 points out of 15 or whatever it is. I think they've
10:10got in it in all their matches. No one will touch that. And if you actually look at Seve,
10:16he won three points out of four with Manuel Pinero when he played with him in 85. So Seve and
10:23fellow Spanish players, we have incredibly strong chemistry, basically. And, you know,
10:29from the word go, the chemistry with 87 when Lazabal first played and things like Ollie
10:35holding that putt on Saturday morning, I think it was in 87. And Seve knocked it four and a half
10:41feet past, you know, and then Ollie hold it again. And you just saw the sort of the chemistry between
10:47them on the 18th screen. And it was like, you know, and that picture was so lucky that jumping
10:54on the shoulders because the Americans were playing at the same, you know, around about the
10:59same moment that happened. And they did it once. I thought, damn, it's a bit of a messy picture
11:06because the caddy was standing right behind him. And the caddies sort of started walking on. They
11:11were still standing in the same spot. And then Ollie did the same thing again. And I got this
11:15lovely clean background. So it was a much nicer picture. But Seve hit his second shot. If you
11:20look at it, Ollie's got a putter and Seve's got his 9-iron or whatever it was, 8-iron. And
11:27Keir Ireland's got these really slopey greens. And you can't actually see the ball on the green
11:33sometimes. And he could just see over the top. And if he stood on his shoulders, he could see
11:36where the ball was and it was on the green, you know. So that's all he was looking for.
11:41I'd always, I said to Robert Green and Richard Simmons, I said, look, the only way to do these
11:47Seve instructions is to try and do it at home. Yeah. And he was happy to have us come to his
11:52home. So I think we had three articles to do on the instruction. And, you know, Seve gave us the
11:59morning basically to do it. And it all went really well. We had a good time doing it because I tried
12:04to make it, you know, challenging. I always thought the best way to do the instruction was to try and
12:10give him challenging shots, bunker shots, try and hold this or try and hit one that lands,
12:15you know, with a nine iron, try and play with a nine iron low at this sort of stuff.
12:18And he was great. And once you got him doing that, he was electric. He'd just show off basically.
12:24And so then we're having lunch in the clubhouse and he's just chatting away. And I said, Seve,
12:30you know, one of the things I'd love to do is go to the beach to see where you
12:35hit balls as a youngster, you know, that, you know, you want to go, we go this afternoon,
12:41and it was like as easy as that. It wasn't planned at all. It was literally,
12:45and, you know, five minutes later, he comes out of the kitchen with a soup can
12:50in the golf club. He grabs a napkin from the table. He said, go on. Off we go into his Range Rover,
12:56drive down to Somo Beach, which is a beautiful beach. And, you know, we were lucky in every
13:02sense because we got onto the beach and it was low tide. So the tide's out. So it's perfect
13:06basically. And it's blowing 30 miles an hour, freezing cold wind. It's February. So it's early
13:12February. So it's pretty cold in Northern Spain at that time of year. But he was like a kid,
13:17literally. And, you know, he went off into the bushes where he parked his car and came out with
13:23a stick. And then he gets on his hands and knees and he cuts the hole out with his soup can,
13:32sticks the stick in, ties the napkin to the top. It's my hole. I learned to putt for Augusta on
13:39this green, you know, because it's so fast, rock hard sand. And it was like billiard table,
13:45basically. So he did a few putts and then he started hitting shots down 9-iron and then a
13:503-iron down the beach. Amazing, basically. We couldn't believe our luck. And he just let him
13:55hit shots, basically. I mean, the day was without a doubt the best, most memorable day of my life,
14:01basically, in golf photography. The final putt. Yeah. I mean,
14:07what can I say about that? It was, you have to be lucky in this game. There's no question you
14:13have to be lucky. And I actually, you know, he got that amazing par, beautiful par on 17.
14:21It's still one shot behind going up 18. Basically, he knew he had to birdie 18.
14:27And the second shot he left 15 feet short of the hole. And if you look at the video,
14:33it's amazing how long that putt took to roll into that hole because it literally,
14:38it was missing. And it just hovered on the edge. And then it fell in. And of course,
14:45when you're photographing, all you've got is just Seve in the camera. You don't know if that ball's
14:50going in the hole. So the only thing that's going to give you the clue that that might be going in
14:54the hole is the crowd or the player reacting. And, you know, he reacted in a massive way.
15:01And luckily enough, I'd had a premonition or whatever it was, you know, roller film,
15:0536 pictures is all it was in those days. You think you can shoot 1000 pictures on something
15:11like that now with digital cameras. We had 36 pictures to deal with a camera that runs at five,
15:17six frames a second. You've got about six seconds of ammunition, basically. Luckily,
15:23I had a fresh roll because, you know, the best picture, the really nice picture, the fist pump
15:28picture was very, very near the end of the sequence. If you look at it on the, you know,
15:34it was very close to the end. And I think just after that, I ran out of film. So I didn't actually
15:39manage to get any pictures of him hugging his caddy and walking off the thing because I've
15:42literally run out of film. So I said 1984 was, you know, I don't like to think I peaked then,
15:49but it was I had two pictures that year. There was that picture. And then two weeks later at
15:55the Olympics in Los Angeles, I got my famous picture of Carl Lewis, the pan shot of him
16:01running, which those two pictures. I mean, I can't you can't quantify how much how many times
16:09they've been used and what they've done for my career, really. But certainly for me, that
16:16Sinandra's moment was that got me going as a golf photographer. Well, and truly,
16:21you know, I couldn't decide. I like this one as the golfer. Yeah, because I think this is it. This
16:27is a golf picture. You know, this is a chap, a player, absolute peak of his swing. The light's
16:34lovely. The fact he's just on an upslope makes his body go into that wonderful shape and the sun
16:42and the hair. And this is where I'm going to come to what I think is one of the most significant
16:47things about photographing in the 80s was that a lot of golfers did not wear hats.
16:55And if you look at a picture, the first thing you're drawn to is the eyes of the subject.
17:00I learned this very early in my sports photography career that you had to get the eyes in focus.
17:07If you don't get the eyes in focus, the picture doesn't work. When you when these golfers are
17:12wearing big visors and big shadows under their eyes, you don't see them. You don't see the
17:16subject. And, you know, I had that those lovely pictures of Seve, Jack Nicklaus in 86, no hat.
17:25The only person who got away with wearing a hat was Greg Norman with the big straw hat, which was,
17:30you know, it used to be kind of light and it was part of his character. But the Navy jumper,
17:36there's something about the Navy jumper, isn't it? It's like iconic. And that, you know, that
17:41logo, the Schlesinger Panther logo is iconic logo. And yeah, so that's been great. I mean,
17:49it's fantastic fun photographing him, basically.