A BIG Win For Purdue

Purdue started 2025 at home with a big win over Northwestern. Purdue came out firing and put the Wildcats way down early. They had a killer instinct that they will need as this season goes on. An early highlight in the game for me was a nice pass to Caleb Furst for this dunk. Caleb was looking in my direction which can be rare. It was nice to get a good dunk photo fairly early in the game.

Braden Does It All

Braden Smith really does do a lot for Purdue. He scores, he passes, he rebounds. He also guides this offense. He is a fun player to watch. I have seen him behind the scenes with some kids that got to visit Mackey Arena, and he was great with them too. This guy can do it all, and he is very easy to root for.

Getting The Rust Out

I felt pretty rusty all game yesterday. The action was not bad to photograph, but there were a few times when I should have switched lenses quickly for reaction shot, and my own reaction was too slow to make it happen. I have not been making so many basketball images lately so that kind of makes sense. For the next couple of weeks I have some assignments so I can get some of that rust out. Tuesday night the UCLA women come to Mackey, and I can get back in there to keep getting better.

Welcome Home

Brooks Barnhizer is a gamer. Early this season he had two teeth knocked out in practice. He had a bridge put in and he continued to play. The Lafayette native had that bridge knocked out at the game yesterday. The hit happened at the other end of the floor, but after a time out he came walking by where I was. I grabbed the 300mm lens to see if I could get a look at what had happened. If you zoom in you can see that it is not pretty. He didn’t come out of the game though. The gave him his false teeth back in a cup, and he stayed in the game. The Lafayette Jeff product is having a great year, and it was cool to see him play. Hopefully the rest of his season goes a little better than this though.

A Blast From The Past

As a kid I really loved watching the Bulls play. They had this young guy named Jordan that looked like he could be pretty good. Their coach Doug Collins had a distinct way to coaching. Watching his son Chris coach yesterday reminded me quite a bit of those days with Doug on the sidelines. Chris has taken another Chicago team and raised their level of play just like his father did. It is always fun making photos of Chris on the sidelines as he is very expressive.

Setting Some Goals

I have not really set so many photography related goals for 2025. Photography changes so much and so fast at times that year long goals are not the best to set anymore. One goal that I set for the blog was to not lean on sports related posts for content so much anymore. This post is from the first game of the year so I thought that I would write something up. Hopefully in the future I have other content for the blog other than sports to post. I may still post small galleries, but they will be an extra post instead of the main post of the day. I love making sports photos, but it is everywhere else right now that is making money for me. My early year goal is to focus on those areas instead of sports. It was five days into the year before I made my first sports photos. It has been a while since I have waited that long to make photos. So far I am sticking to my guns and pulling back on the sports content.