My Favorite Music Photos Of 2024

These last few years have been kind of crazy on the music front for me. I have not been to as many concerts as I used to, but that has kind of been replaced with more theater shows. This year the only concerts that I attended were local acts, but the musicals went up. I went from seeing some of the musicals from the crowd to getting to make photos of them.

This was easily the highlight of the year for me as far as music goes. Yo Yo Ma came to Purdue to talk about his process and to play a few songs. I have edited photos to his music for years now so it was crazy to get to see him play it live. At the end when he did an audience participation bit I walked down to see him up close. I am glad that I did. It was great to hear him talk about his process. I am a process guy, and I love to hear about how other creatives do their thing. He had an enthusiasm for music that was contagious as well. I think that this photo shows that off very nicely.

When we first got cable one of the movies that was on all of the time was Little Shop Of Horrors. I was not sure about it at first, but it is one of my favorite movies ever now. This past spring Harrison performed it as their spring show. It was awesome to see it in person, and the kids at Harrison knocked it out of the park as they always do.

Years ago I saw a great video online before Nickelback was to perform during halftime of a game in Detroit on Thanksgiving. It was Postmodern Jukebox making the song ‘How you remind me’ sound better than it ever had before. Ever since then I have followed Scott Bradley and his Postmodern Jukebox. They played the Long Center this year, and it was a fun night seeing a lot of modern songs reimagined.

I made this photo during one of the summer festivals downtown. We love to see Sheeza play so we head down whenever we can. Here everything worked out to make a nice photo.

This was the first musical that I was able to photograph in a kind of official capacity. Most of the time prior to this I had just made photos from the crowd. I had a great time, and it was awesome to see how these things are put together. My little one saw how the camp counselors were cheering on the kids on stage and it gave her the bug to get onstage. This kind of jump started a little more theater in our house.

I have always wanted to see something at the Tippecanoe Amphitheater, and this summer I was able to do just that. We watched Mamma Mia! at Harrison and then drove out here to see the Civic Theatre perform The Descendants. As the light was fading the venue started to look really good. This would be a fun place to make some concert photos.

This past fall I was able to photograph the Harrison Drama Club performing Into The Woods. I had never seen the play before, but I really needed a fairy tale at the time. My father’s wake was the next day, and I just wanted to do something and get lost in it for a while. As they always do these kids put an amazing show on. We came back into town a little early to see them perform it again on Sunday.

One of my favorite views of campus with Yo Yo Ma in front of it. I will end the countdown the same way that I started it with a photo of my favorite event of the year.

This was a fun year where I got to cross some things off my bucket list. One of those things was to see Yo Yo Ma. Not only that I was feet away from him as he played. It doesn’t get much better than that. I hope that I can build off of what I was able to do here and get more kinds of music into my portfolio.