My Favorite Volleyball Photos Of 2024

This was a year when I didn’t get to as many volleyball games as I would have liked to, but when I did I usually saw something pretty good. Volleyball is a fast and challenging sport to photograph. It is usually the point where I think that I have it figured out every year when the season ends. Next year I need to find a team or an outlet that lets me make more volleyball photos. When I do get to a match I have a ton of fun. Below are my favorite volleyball photos from last year.

One of the highlights of the year was seeing a sold out Mackey cheer on the Boilers as they won the Monon Spike trophy. I am going to be the first to admit that I almost missed this photo. I got a nice celebration photo that I liked. I was just starting to get out of the scrum when I heard someone say “Do you want this?”. It was the trophy, and I made probably my favorite photo of the year.

Another great moment was being there for Loyola getting their first ever NCAA Tournament win. The lower seed can sometimes get an upset, but this team dominated in a three set sweep over BYU. It was a fun development that extended my volleyball season one more day.

A sold out crowd in Mackey cheering on Purdue is always a good thing. I wish that every volleyball match could be in here with a sold out crowd.

I love these battles at the net. You have two players going up to try and do anything to get the point. They are not that common, and you are not always in the best position to make a photo of the moment. Here I lucked out and made a couple photos of these battles that I really like.

Sometimes in this game it is just a finger that can get the ball over the net. Here are a few of my favorite photos of players doing whatever it takes to get the ball over the net.

Here I am taking advantage of things that I don’t normally get to see to make a couple of photos of the serve. The first photo was made during one of the Mackey games when I could play with my angle to set these types of photos up. I had this idea, but it was just not working with certain serves. Here it worked out great to get most of the Purdue into the photo of the serve. The second photo is just using a bit of the NCAA signage as a backdrop for the photo.

Another wide photo from the sellout volleyball game in Mackey for Purdue against Indiana. Mackey is a special place. When it is sold out it is a little bit cooler. When the volleyball team can sell it out it makes for a special game.

This might have been my weirdest job of the year. I was contacted by UC Davis to photograph a game of theirs at Purdue this fall. Then the school started wavering and said that the parents would pay me. It was a crazy series of emails from a few different people, but it would be gift cards on location. It seemed kind of a weird form of payment for me so I started to get a weird feeling about payment. When the day came nobody had any cards. I still photographed the game though because you never know. UC Davis had a nice upset win over Kansas State with a lot of emotion. I never did get paid for the gig so the photos never went anywhere. It was a fun game to photograph though, and as always it was practice to get better.

These types of photos are fun to make, but they take a little luck. A lot has to go your way to get the ball just before it hits the players arms. The action is so fast that the player is usually still looking up when you make these photos.

This has been a weird countdown to talk about the season. For a couple of these segme s I have had photos of players who have left Purdue for other schools. That is just how things are now. I totally understand it from the players perspective. They have to do what is best for them. As a fan though I am always selfish and I want to see them finish their careers at Purdue. Part of the fun of college athletics was watching players grow over the course of their career. We are at a point now where that is becoming less and less of a thing. Eva Hudson above was a player that I loved to photograph. She was amazing on the court, and also was emotional. She just made good photos for you. My friends at Kentucky will now get to have a chance to photograph her playing.

This was a fun game to be at. I used to photograph for both Harrison and West Lafayette, but they had other people at the game. I was kind of free to just roam around and have some fun finding new angles. Without worrying about game coverage I could just try stuff. Late in the game West Side was feeling pretty good, and I lucked into a good spot to make this photo.

Speaking of luck I have been lucky enough to photograph a handful of NCAA Volleyball matches over the years. It started a few years ago getting the chance to photograph Purdue as they battled in Missouri. Then luckily for me I have photographed a few matches here at Purdue as other teams have come into town. This year Loyola asked me to be their photographer. Volleyball is always a fun sport to cover, but when you put the added tension of the tournament into the mix it becomes even more fun to photograph.

My volleyball season started off by making photos for UMBC in the Stacey Clark Classic here at Purdue. I may sound like a broken record, but Stacey was an incredible human being who had great support for Purdue. Beyond that she was a voice early on in my photography career that would encourage me. I always try and get to Holloway to make photos at a couple of the games of that tournament to honor her.

This might be the shortest outing of the year for me. I went to Harrison to photograph their team as they played in the old gym. The match started pretty late so I only was able to photograph the first set before I had to get to my assignment for the night. I did make this photo that I really liked from my time in the gym though.

This is one where I had to slide over a big after seeing the first serve to be able to make this photo. I wanted the hand to just clear the face, and here I had just enough of the eye to make a photo that I really liked. Having a long lens again this year really helped me get back to the photos that I used to make in volleyball. For the past couple of seasons my longest lens was a 135mm. Having the 300mm lens this year really was huge.

This was a fun end to a match. You had a great play that led directly to the winning point. As it happened I hoped that the celebration would face the camera, and I was lucky that it did. These are the moments that are fun to capture.

This was another fun moment that was pretty lucky. The Harrison boys volleyball team had a photographer this season so I didn’t get out there much. I wanted to test out my 300mm lens though so I took just it to a match to play around. I was up high ready for play when the players did this pre match routine that I had not seen before. Luckily I was in a good position to capture it.

For match point against Indiana I wanted to be wide. It was a special match in front of a sold out Mackey Arena crowd. Being tight for the point could have been nice, but I wanted to show a little of the scene. I really like how this photo turned out. It tells the story of the day.

Here is another photo where there is some skill involved to be on the player and have focus, but a lot of luck as far as ball position goes. I think that I have the photo where you can see her face, but I like this one a little more.

Like I said above I have been lucky enough to be a part of the NCAA Volleyball tournament a few times now. It never gets old. The pregame NCAA commercial has the same music behind it as it did years ago when I was attending games as a fan. I wanted to show off some of the setting of the game so during the anthem I ran up to the top of the bleachers to make this photo.

The last photo is one of my favorites of the year. I guess all of these are, but this one is near the top for me. It is another from the UC Davis upset of Kansas State. It was an emotional game, and this photos shows some of that emotion.

This was a weird volleyball season for me. I didn’t make the volume of pictures that I did in years past, but when I was at a match for some reason it was a really good one. Some of those like the two games in Mackey were very planned to be a big deal, but even the couple of high school games that I dropped in to see turned out to be great games. I really love volleyball, and I have to find a way to make it a bigger part of my fall next year.