A clubhouse is the one building on a golf course that has to do everything at once: welcome you, frame the view, and look like it belongs to the land around it. I photograph every clubhouse the way I photograph any fine piece of architecture, and for me and my company Studio J Inc. that means waiting for the moment when the building and the course share the same light. Over the years I have photographed clubhouses across the Las Vegas Valley, and every one of them has taught me something about timing, patience and balance.

SouthShore Country Club at Lake Las Vegas

The most recent clubhouse in this collection is also one of my favorites. In November 2024 I photographed the clubhouse at SouthShore Country Club at Lake Las Vegas in Henderson, home to the first private Jack Nicklaus Signature Course in Nevada. I put the camera in the air for this one, so you can see how the clubhouse sits on its hillside above the practice green, with the palms, the red tile roofline and the desert mountain rising right behind it.

I wanted low, warm light for this frame. That raking sun pulls texture out of the stone base and the mountain, keeps the white walls from going flat, and makes the putting green glow. Waiting for the light to come in at that angle is what turns a nice building into a photograph of a place.

Siena Golf Club in Summerlin

At Siena Golf Club in Summerlin, the Tuscan style clubhouse was designed by Altevers Associates of San Diego and sits beside Lake Siena. In 2002 I set up across the water so the palms and the facade would reflect in the lake. A reflection like that only works when the water goes glassy, so the whole job is being set up, composed and ready for the few still minutes when the wind lays down. Those minutes are worth every bit of the wait.

Bear’s Best Las Vegas

Not every clubhouse sits beside water. SouthShore climbs its hillside and Siena rests on its lake, but this 2004 frame of the clubhouse at Bear’s Best Las Vegas in Summerlin looks across the green toward a long, low desert building, with the Las Vegas Strip stretched across the horizon. Bear’s Best was a Jack Nicklaus design that brought together 18 of his favorite holes from courses he designed around the world, and it opened in 2001.

This frame answers the question I ask on every clubhouse assignment: how does the building sit on the course? The rooflines, the stone, the landscaping and the view all have to read as one designed place, the same way I approach commercial and retail projects, resort and casino work and luxury homes.

That clubhouse now belongs to a different chapter of the same land. Bear’s Best closed to public play in June 2025, and the course in The Ridges is being rebuilt as the private Amara Golf & Social Club. The owners have described a members only club with a boutique clubhouse, dining and lounge spaces, terraces, hospitality suites for visiting members, and a planned set of boutique villas beside it. Jackson Kahn Design is redesigning the golf course for that private membership, and Amara’s own site invites people to gather, play and live fully in the moment, with the experience still coming soon. No opening date has been announced yet. For me, photographing a clubhouse like this is always about catching the building while it still reads as the heart of a course. Frames like this one keep that moment when the desert green, the long low roofline and the Strip on the horizon were all still one designed place at Bear’s Best.

Light, timing and the companion golf posts

Timing and lighting run through everything I shoot, from golf to very different subjects like a high rise condo at the Waldorf Astoria, restored Tuscan farmhouses at Casali di Casole and Loewe at The Crystals. A companion daylight golf post is coming soon, and it includes the clubhouse at TPC Summerlin. If you would like to know more about how I work, you can read my story.

The Falls clubhouse at Lake Las Vegas

I saved this one for last, because The Falls is also featured in my night post, Architectural Golf Course Night Photography. In 2008 I photographed the clubhouse at The Falls Golf Club, also at Lake Las Vegas in Henderson. The Falls was a Tom Weiskopf design that debuted in 2007, and the course closed in 2009, so this frame is now a record of a clubhouse that no longer operates as one. I composed it from the course, across the fairway bunkers, so the land leads your eye straight up to the tower and the arches.

This is the kind of shot I live for. I waited for the sky to drop into that deep dusk blue, when the warm lights of the clubhouse match the last light on the mountains behind it. Too early and the building goes flat against a bright sky. Too late and the sky turns black. Balancing those two exposures, the glow of the windows and the color of the sky, is where a clubhouse photograph comes alive.

That night post also includes my night shot at Shadow Creek, where one photograph took three to four hours, and the clubhouse at TPC Las Vegas in low light.

Studio J Inc. has been capturing architectural photography for 26 years in Las Vegas and around the world. If you have any questions about this project, or about a similar upcoming project, please don’t hesitate to contact Eric Jamison.