My Favorite Photos From The 2023-2024 Purdue Sports Year

This was the beginning of something new for me this year. In the past I made photos thinking of the many uses of them after the fact. This year the goal was simple. Make photos that will sell. It was a learning curve for sure. I was learning to get faster at captioning and getting images out faster. It is another skill to try and get better. It was a fun year though getting to see some big games. I didn’t have to try and get photos of everyone anymore. I could just focus on making images that would sell. The downside of thinking like that is that it really makes very little financial sense to attend a lot of Purdue events. There is no market for wire photos from them. I still tried to get to as much as I could this year. With a year of learning what sells and what doesn’t under my belt I feel a little more prepared for this coming year. Here are some of my favorite photos from this past year.

This list has to start with the Final Four appearance for Purdue. I spent the last few minutes of the game on campus waiting to see what would happen there. I made some photos I liked, but not anything great. At the airport that night though it was an amazing sight. Fans coming out late on a school night with their kids to welcome home the Boilers. This was a celebration a long time coming, and the fans were not going to miss it. I like this photo the bets from that night.

This year I set a goal to photograph the runout at the football games a little different each week. Making photos for the wire means that you have to standout in some way. I used to watch the wire guys all line up next to each other for the runout and wonder why they did it. If you are making the same photo as everyone else why will it sell? This year it was a good strategy especially with the new tunnel and south end zone additions to the stadium. I always love the wide angle views of the stadium. You can see some of my favorites from 2023 here.

This year Purdue baseball had a great start to the Big Ten season, and they were right in the hunt for the title. With the stakes being a little higher that meant that so was the emotion. Here are a couple of my favorite emotion photos from this past week. You can see all of my favorite photos from the Purdue baseball season in this post here.

This photo kind of goes with the baseball photo above. You know that it was a big play when you see this reaction. With football celebrations luck has to be on your side a lot. Here I think that everything worked out for a photo that I really liked.

This one might be a stretch to be on here. I was at the Big Ten Swimming and Diving Championships for Minnesota but the Burke Aquatic center looked amazing for the week. When I didn’t have any racers in the water I would run upstairs to make some wides of the action. You can see my favorite photos from the Championships here.

I am always getting reminded that what I do is pretty cool. Here I had the chance a few times over the weekend to photograph the Purdue women’s basketball national title team. At the time I was a Purdue student and I loved watching them play. Seeing them again over the weekend that they were celebrated was pretty cool.

This photo was a long time coming. In the past when Purdue would clinch I was up top somewhere to make a wide overall image of the event. In 2023 I couldn’t get a pass into the stadium so I was in the crowd watching. I would be lying if I said that it didn’t hurt that after all of the years of giving images to the school that I wasn’t able to be down there for the celebration. I say all of that to let you know what a big deal it was that I was able to do it this year. I was watching the standings and hoping that I would get my shot to make this photo. It was a long time coming, and I am very glad that I was able to make it.

This year was new on the football field too. For a few of the games my primary target for photos was on the other team. The fun part about football this year was that it was basically see ball photograph ball. No more trying to make images of everyone on the field. I could just focus on making images of the big plays. Here things worked out in my favor to get some great action with the new tunnel in the background.

This year we had a couple of baseball gams with some great light as the sun set. In the past it seemed like it never worked out for great sunsets at Alexander. I really love how this photo turned out.

This year I photographed more softball than I ever have before. I only made two Purdue games though. I think that they are headed in a great direction though, and I hope that the schedule works out for me to see more of them next season.

If there is one play to remember from the 2023-2024 year it might be this three pointer by Zach Edey. It was a moment we had been waiting on, and he made it happen against Indiana. It was a great moment that I was lucky to be on this end of the court for. It gave me a unique view of the action from most of the other wire guys.

Tim Newton is an icon at Purdue. When I didn’t live in the area I would listen to early versions of streams where you had to keep your phone awake or lose the connection. Tim was that voice of the women’s program. Here he was honored for calling his 1,000th women’s basketball game.

I tried something different with the low sun after Purdue won the bucket this year. I closed down my aperture to get a sun star in my photos. I don’ t know if I would do it again, but I wanted to be different. I think that a pop of flash could have made things better so maybe it is worth another shot the next time I get the chance. You can see more of my favorite Purdue football photos from last season here.

Mary Ashley Stevenson was a fun freshman to watch play this past year. She was tough and looked like the key to bringing this team back to where they belong at the top of the Big Ten. The reality is that college sports doesn’t work that way anymore. I love that the players can go and get the money, but the selfish fan in me will miss watching athletes grow over the years. You can see more of my favorite images from the women’s basketball season last year here.

Sometimes worlds collide in college sports. I photographed Caleb Krockover for years. His dad makes photos alongside of me on the sidelines. It was cool to try and find a couple of ways to document his last season at Purdue this year. I love this view from up top of Caleb walking onto the field.

I only saw the softball team play twice this year. They looked exciting, but the schedule just didn’t work out to get to more games. I like this photo because of the pure chance of it. I was getting the runner on second getting off the bag and the ball comes flying through the frame.

I have seen Purdue win the cannon trophy in Champaign and in West Lafayette. It never gets old seeing the team with this after the game. In the past I would only get photos of these rivalry trophies when Purdue won. With my new role though I will always get to make these photos no matter who wins.

I don’t know that we will ever see another player like Zach Edey. He was clearly the bet player on the court. He was also an amazing person off of the court. Here I had some fun with the stadium lights as Zach walked over for a post game interview.

I love the throwback Purdue football jerseys. We all love what we first saw teams wearing. When I first saw Purdue play this is the jersey that they wore. I hope that with the new jerseys these will still be somewhere in the rotation. It would be cool to see them against Notre Dame. I really like the way that this photo of Pete turned out.

This past year it seemed like every time that I was in Holloway to see Purdue play volleyball it was working for the other team. I did manage to see them play once just focusing on them. They were a very fun team to be around. Hopefully by the time this post goes live I will have already seen this team scrimmage in person.

As the sun sets at Alexander Field the fun can begin. This year without needing to get every action shot I could have a little more fun. Here I tried something that I haven’t before, and it worked very well.

Words just cannot do justice to how much I loved Tyler Trent. He was so brave facing insurmountable odds. This past school year was the fifth anniversary of the Tyler Trent game and also the fifth anniversary of his death. I set a goal to try and show as many tributes to Tyler during that game agains Ohio State as I could.

Dan Ross has meant so much to Purdue over the years. This past year he retired from his spot as the head of the swim program. Here he gives one of the bet intros to Shout! that I can remember. I might only be rivaled over the years by the intro that head volleyball coach Dave Shondell gave years ago. It was great to see a stadium full of people give him the love that he deserved.

From my seat across the court I had a pretty good view of the Purdue intros. Here I had some fun with the floor reflection. It was a rare time when the cheerleaders and TV crew were not in the way. I am glad that I was able to make this photo.

One sport that I didn’t get out to much this year was tennis. I really wanted to test out my 300mm lens so I went down to Schwartz to give it a try. I thought that it would be great for the celebration photos and I was right.

The light at the spring game for football this year was interesting. I found a spot where I could isolate the players against a wall in shade and just waited for people to come through the frame. This was my favorite photo from my time camping at the tunnel.

I had a ton of fun over the years making photos of Mike Bolton at Purdue. On this night I knew that it might be for the last time so I tried to make one last photo of Mike that I liked. The blue hour sky helped make that happen. This was a huge senior class this year, and it was the last class that had players in it that I covered as part of the Purdue photo team. You can see more of my favorite photos from the baseball season here.

The camera on the floor is a great way to get a wider view of the action. I have a tight photo of this dunk that I like, but there is something about the context of this image that I like more. I spent most of my season at the other end of the court so this was a rare image for me to make this past year. It is fairly similar to a photo that I made during my first game on the floor that ended up on the front page of the Purdue website.

Wrestling is a sport that I don’t get to as often as I would like. Usually the early season matches don’t have a lot of emotion in them. Here though a last second win helped me make a really fun emotional photo.

This was a long post. Thanks for making it this far. Imagine being tired after a long hard fought basketball game where you were beaten the entire time. You would probably want to head somewhere to rest. Not Zach Edey. He stayed for hours after every game to sign autographs and take selfies with the fans. Here is one of my favorite photos from his post game fun with the fans.

As I said above this was a transition year for me. I was still getting used to the new parts of my job throughout the year. By the end of the year though I had a pretty good system going that I think worked pretty well. At the end of the day I was still able to do what I love which is always good. This year I have a couple of side projects that I have in mind to do along with my work with the wire. This will give me reasons to get to some of the olympic sports that I normally would not get to.