My Favorite Stadium Photos Of 2024

This is one of my favorite lists each year. I love covering an event, and part of telling the story of an event can be a good overall photo. Most of these stadium photos combine my love of sports photography with my love of landscape photography. For most of these lists I don’t think about them much over the course of a year. This list though is always on my mind. When I make a good photo of a stadium I know that it will end up here. This was a fun year filled with some great moments. Below are my favorite stadium photos from 2024.

Ross Ade Stadium under the lights is tough to beat. For the Oregon game I went up top to get a runout photo with the pyro going off. One of these days we will get another runout during a sunset where we can really have some fun. This worked out pretty well though.

This was a crazy year for the Purdue women’s basketball team. A couple of sellouts after not having any since I was in school here. That was a long time ago. For the first sellout against Iowa I went up to about where I was sitting for the prior sellout back when I was a student.

I don’t know what the official name for this area on campus is, but I have always called it the corridor. You have Mackey at the end, Holloway on the right, and the practice court and offices on the left. It is one of my favorite places on campus to make photos. Here are a couple of my favorites from this past year.

I have been lucky enough to photograph every Mackey t-shirt game that they have had. It is one of my favorite games to photograph every year because it is an excuse to make even more wide photos of the stadium. For this game I usually get to the arena very early to make a photo of it set up and empty. Then you have a few more chances during the game to make photos of it. In the old days I would spend a half roaming around making photos during various points of play. Now though I have to get action so most of my wide stuff happens pregame.

This year I was lucky enough to get to photograph the Big Ten Swimming and Diving Championships again for Minnesota. It is a fun week of making photos of some great athletes. On one of the days I didn’t have anyone in the first heat of the day so I went up top to make a photo during the National Anthem. I don’t get in here much anymore so when I do I always try and find a wide photo to show it off.

It is funny how things work out. I made this snowy sunset photo of Bob Friend Field last winter thinking about making warm baseball photos there in the spring. As it turned out I only had one chance to get out there this past spring, and that was only for a couple of innings. The team has a photographer so my stuff is extra these days, but it is still fun to make baseball photos in our neighborhood.

I feel like a lot of the photos for this countdown end up being of Mackey Arena. Throughout the course of the year I probably spend more time in that stadium than any other. This one might barely count as a stadium photo, but I think that it is just wide enough to make the cut. I love being able to see the crowd erupt after Zach Edey hit a three against Indiana.

Another baseball stadium where I will say that I didn’t really get to photograph much baseball this year. Early in the season I made quite a few Purdue baseball games. When the weather improved though it always seemed like I had somewhere else to be.

I don’t know that a cow patch is a stadium, but on this day it was. The Prophetstown old time baseball game is always a good time. I love the old rules and equipment. The barn is the perfect backdrop for the photo as well.

I made this photo of a baseball stadium while at a soccer match. I went to the game with this photo in mind. I knew where I could stand to make the photo, but you can only be in this spot during a game. I waited until the light was gone, and then focused on making some comet photos. I really like how this one turned out.

I went to that soccer match to make a comet photo, but I ended up with a fun celebration photo as well. With the last light of the day in the sky Purdue scored a goal and gave me a fun photo. I wasn’t there to make game action photos. Those days are long gone. I had some wide photos in mind. The celebration made this a fun photo to make.

While walking into the Burke Aquatic Center I made this photo on a frosty day. I was there to cover a high school meet, but the outside looked too good not to make a photo of it. These simple photos are often my favorite.

This summer we had some fun traveling a little for a travel softball team. On one of the weekends the light was just hitting the field as the team arrived for the day. I really like this photo once again for its simplicity. I made a lot of action photos on this day, but this was a fun one to start with.

 

The statues around the Mackey complex get a lot of attention from me over the course of the year. At some point it seems like I have made a photo of them from every angle. Here though I had a couple from this past year that I liked. In the first one the John Purdue statue looks good with snow falling all around it. It is a simple, but fun photo. The second one I have been trying to make for a while now. The rainbow over the Boilermaker statue. I think that here I missed the most brilliant part of the rainbow, but it was still there enough for me to make a photo.

Ross Ade Stadium always looks good at sunset. I was out for a walk using the golden light of the day and about done. On my way back to my car I realized that the sky could light up. I picked a spot where I could see the Tyler Trent gate and the scoreboard and just waited. I was rewarded with the photo that you see above.

The Purdue volleyball team sold out two matches in Mackey Arena this past fall. A record for fans was enough to have me just go wide for a lot of the matches. I didn’t know what kind of action from the matches would sell for the wire, but these wide photos would sell for sure. It was a good choice, and a fun one.

For the last home football game of the year I went wide a couple of times. For the runout I wanted the starburst in my photo. The timing of it was a little off, but I think that the team running out late actually made the photo. Just after the half the sun was setting and the sky was lighting up. I ran up into the stands after a score to make this photo of the kickoff with the sunset. I like both of them, and they are both reasons why this countdown is fun for me.

The final photo of the countdown is of the anthem during the NCAA Tournament volleyball match at Holloway Gymnasium this year. I love this place packed, and I knew that this might be my only opportunity to make this photo. I would be pressed for my action photos if this were to be a three set match so I went for the wide before things got going. I wasn’t in this gym much this year so I wanted to make a wide of it.

This was a fun year for making my stadium photos. I don’t have the variety that I used to have when I travelled more, but I like having the photos from the moments with no games happening that show up on here now. As I said at the top this is one of my favorite lists to put together. It is also a fun one to think about throughout the year. It is always getting me to get up off the field and up into the stands to make a photo.