Today we’d like to introduce you to Dylan Kuester.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up playing baseball, and it was really the game that shaped my early life- travel ball, high school ball, and eventually playing at the college level. Along the way, I started picking up a camera here and there in high school, just messing around, but it wasn’t until I got to the collegiate level that something clicked. Being immersed in that environment- the intensity, the storylines, the moments that never made it into a box score- I realized that telling those stories through video was something I wanted to keep doing, maybe even more than I wanted to keep playing. That’s where I found the intersection of creativity and sports that’s driven everything since.
I got into sports media the way a lot of people in this industry do: by saying yes to more than I was qualified for and figuring it out on the fly. That mindset carried me into college athletics administration, where I spent the last several years as Assistant Athletic Director of Creative Strategy at UT Dallas. When I got there, there wasn’t really a media department to speak of- so I built one. Social media strategy, video production, branding, a student-worker pipeline that actually developed talent instead of just filling shifts I got to build the whole thing from scratch, which taught me more about leadership and systems than any classroom ever could.
Somewhere along the way, I realized I didn’t just want to tell stories inside one athletic department. I wanted to build something of my own around storytelling, too. On the side, I started New Wave Media, a photography and videography business that’s grown to cover everything from wedding films to sports highlight packages and creative content work for clients outside of athletics. It’s given me a completely different lens- literally and figuratively on what it means to run a creative business, not just work inside one.
Now I’m stepping into a new chapter, joining Dave Campbell’s Texas Football. Coming from Oklahoma, I didn’t grow up with it the way most Texans did – but once I moved down here and saw the role it plays in how this state follows football, it was clear this was a different level of storytelling platform, and one I wanted to be part of. My path here wasn’t linear, and it wasn’t handed to me. It’s been built one relationship, one late night edit, one “figure it out” moment at a time. And honestly, that’s still how I operate – build the system, tell the story, and keep finding the next angle nobody else is looking at.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It hasn’t been smooth, no- and I think that’s true for most people who end up building something instead of just following a track that already existed.
The first real struggle was the identity shift. I spent my whole life being the guy on the field, and switching to being the guy behind the camera meant starting over in a lot of ways learning gear, learning editing, learning storytelling as a craft, all while watching peers who’d been doing it since they were fourteen. There was a real period of self-doubt about whether I was making the right call walking away from something I’d invested years into.
Then there was the grind of actually building the media department at UT Dallas. There wasn’t a blueprint waiting for me. I was doing the job of what should’ve been three or four people: shooting, editing, managing student workers, building brand standards, all with a fraction of the staffing that bigger programs have. It taught me a ton about systems and leadership, but it also meant a lot of long nights and figuring things out under pressure with no real safety net.
On top of that, I was building New Wave Media at the same time- nights, weekends, whatever hours were left after the day job. Early on I undercharged constantly, took jobs at family rates or favors because I didn’t yet know my own worth, and had to learn the hard way what my time and skill set actually justified charging. And honestly, there’s a ceiling in college athletics that’s real- the pay doesn’t always match the workload or the creative output being asked of you which is part of why I started building something of my own in the first place, rather than just hoping the ceiling would move.
Taking the leap now to Dave Campbell’s Texas Football means walking away from something I built with my own hands at UT Dallas, which isn’t easy either. But every one of those struggles is part of why I felt ready for it.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
New Wave Media is my photography and videography business, built around cinematic storytelling for two core areas: weddings and sports content. On the wedding side, I focus on capturing the story of a day, not just the checklist of moments, with real emotion and real moments cut together in a way that feels like a film rather than a highlight reel. On the sports side, I create highlight packages and hype videos for programs and athletes who want their story told at a level usually reserved for much bigger budgets.
What sets me apart is the intersection I sit at. I’m not just a videographer, I’m someone who spent years inside a college athletic department building a media operation from the ground up. That gives me an eye for storytelling, pacing, and emotion in sports content that a lot of wedding and events videographers who dabble in sports just don’t have, and it gives me production polish on the wedding side that a lot of purely sports focused shooters don’t bring either. I speak both languages fluently.
I’m most proud of the fact that New Wave Media has grown almost entirely on relationships and word of mouth. Every client has led to another conversation, another referral, another project. I built this the way I build everything: systems first, relationships always, and a refusal to hand over anything less than my best work, even on the jobs that started as favors.
What I want people to know is that New Wave Media isn’t a side hustle chasing quick projects. It’s a real creative business with a clear point of view: cinematic quality, genuine storytelling, and a level of care that treats every client’s moment like it matters, because it does.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
If I had to pick one thing, it would be adaptability. I’ve had to reinvent what I do more than once, from being a college athlete to picking up a camera and learning storytelling from scratch, to building a media department with no blueprint and limited resources, to now stepping into an entirely new stage of my career at Dave Campbell’s Texas Football. None of those transitions came with a manual. Each one required me to learn quickly, stay coachable, and figure things out under pressure instead of waiting until I felt fully ready.
That adaptability is closely tied to something else I believe in strongly, which is that relationships create opportunities. Almost everything good that’s happened in my career and in New Wave Media traces back to a relationship I built and stayed consistent with over time. But adaptability is what let me actually show up and deliver once those opportunities appeared. It’s one thing to get the chance. It’s another to be able to shift, learn, and perform when the moment actually arrives, and that’s the quality I’ve leaned on the most.
Pricing:
- Wedding Packages: $2000-$5000
- 1 hour photo sessions: $100-$500
- Sports Sizzles/Edits: $500-$2000
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dylankuester3adf.myportfolio.com/dylan-kuester
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/new.wave.media.dk/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-kuester-a90652234/
