My name is Justin Robbins, and I’ve been messing around with cameras since I was a child. I remember all the way back in elementary school, I was making dumb skits and fake documentaries with friends and little stop motion videos through my tiny little Sony. In middle school and early high school I tried my hand at making videos for apps such as Cinemagram and Vine with varying levels of success, yet a consistent level of future embarrassment. However, life and playing sports soon took up all of my focus and I forgot my want to create stuff. For a while it was a distant memory.

That is until I tore my ACL right before my sophomore season of college football. As I recovered physically and mentally, the extra time to think gave my interest for creating content the ability to finally surface again. I started screen recording NFL and college football clips to make sports edits for a YouTube channel I randomly made. In the end, that random YouTube channel grew for 4 years and garnered over 4 million views and 6.7k subscribers. I did it through college as a passion project while making no money from it and with no idea that I could eventually do it as a job. Foreshadowing.

Luckily, the year before I graduated from Texas Tech, I got the opportunity to work for the broadcasting department, and I obviously loved it. The environment was incredible and I got to film sports for a living in the high pressure environment of live TV. What’s cooler than that? I liked it so much that I ended up coming back after I graduated to work as a freelancer and through that year I learned about the creative program for Texas Tech Athletics. The idea of editing videos as a job, and to get to edit with my own clips for once? This was something I spent uncountable hours doing in my free time and I could make a job out of this?

Duh.

I asked my boss at broadcasting for a chance at working for the creative side and thankfully he gave me the opportunity. Since shooting spring football in April of 2022, I haven’t looked back. Any opportunity I’ve gotten to shoot and edit, I’ve tried to put the same level of love and passion I put into every one of my 180 something YouTube videos that I made for fun. And this time I could give something; to players, to their families, to fans, I could make something that would not only allow me to show off my talents but give me the ability to actually recreate an experience or memory for other people.

I don’t know how I ended up in this position, I got very lucky along the way and had a lot of help from others, but I am grateful for the fact that I can now pursue a career that legitimately does not feel like work for me. I’m so excited to keep growing and learning in a field that means so much to me. And hot damn, that’s pretty darn cool.