Purdue Has A Fun Time Beating Nebraska

Some games are just fun to photograph. One of the teams are having a good time playing the game, and that makes for good photos. Yesterday that was the case for Purdue against Nebraska. It seemed like about every third trip down the floor for Purdue they would make a play that would get the bench and the crowd going. The fun emotion makes for great photographs and a good time. A game like yesterday is always fun to photograph if it is the home team having fun. The crowd and the players make photos easy.

Ten Years Apart

I had a moment during the game photographing Nebraska yesterday. In 2015 I wanted to be on the floor in Louisville when Purdue played. To do that I took jobs with Iowa State and Hampton to get down there. On media day with Iowa State I made this photo of Sam Hoiberg. Ten years later I photographed him again on the court for Nebraska. It is a cool moment that also shows that I may have been doing this for too long. That photo of Sam was one of my favorites from that trip to Louisville so it was cool to think about it again.

Pregame Luck

I walked onto the floor during the Purdue intros yesterday. I didn’t plan on making any pregame photos, but here with the lights in the crowd and the light moving on and off the players I decided to try and time the light on Worster here to make this photo. I didn’t plan it out, but I took what was given to me. Sometimes those are the best photos.

Changing It Up

For the game yesterday I decided to change things up a bit with my gear. For the first half with Purdue coming at me I used my 50mm and 135mm lenses. I wanted to be able to get everything around the basket. For the second half I kept using the 50mm for the stuff around the basketball, but I brought out the 300mm for the Purdue reactions from the other side of the court. It was a good call as they turned and celebrated my way several times. As I have said before this was a fun second half for Purdue. The 300 let me capture that emotion up close. As this year goes on and I start to feel like my photos are repeating themselves I will change up gear to try and change up my look.

Writing About Sports

This year I made a goal to write about sports less on this blog. It becomes too easy of content, and slows me down making other photos. I wanted to focus more on the other portions of my photography. For this game though there were a couple of stories that I thought were worth telling. I had a great time in Mackey so why not tell about it? Below are a couple of bonus photos from the game.