Over the past 10 years, Joey Echeverria has been fascinated by the art of film-making, photography and pretty much anything associated with media production. It was not until five years ago that he really made photography a part of his life and the person he is today. He was plugged into Highpoint Church’s media production team back in Memphis, where the head media producer took Echeverria under his wing and mentored him. On the media production team, Echeverria was taught the basics of what he uses and incorporates into his work today and was able to get years of experience taking what he learned and applying it to all of the material he’s created during his time at Union.
Currently, Echeverria works as a staff photographer in the office of university communications, where head photographer, Kristi Woody, brings in talented students to help divide her work load. Every week, the students are given a list of events to take pictures for, such as chapel services or different sports events or games, and they pick the event they want to shoot for. They are given the freedom to go out and get the best content they possibly can for the school’s media.
“The hardest part of the job is just coming up with creative shots,” Echeverria said. “Sometimes you’re at an event and you’re snapping shots and see that a lot of the pictures you’ve taken are boring or very plain, so it’s necessary to keep it fresh so that the content being put up on the website is eye-opening and appealing to the students and faculty who scroll through the photos.”
Echeverria loves the work he’s doing now, and he’s very satisfied with the impact he’s had on campus so far. He hopes to someday translate what he’s learned at Union into a full time career. Echeverria already has a few internships under his belt, including one with Tractor Supply Company in Brentwood, Tenn., that he completed last summer. He applied for their media internship, where he helped produce the company’s training videos, content for their big events, and occasionally their social media content. Echeverria was tasked with creating the company’s new promotional video, for which he held multiple interviews with interns. The video was then sent out to several different schools and universities all across the country.
“Working at Tractor really taught me a lot and has been a great starting point to get my foot in the door for one day producing feature films or opening up a production company,” Echeverria said.
