Rising Stars: Meet Dana Imran of Atlanta

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dana Imran.

Hi Dana , please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
It’s actually me and my girlfriend she’s my business partner we met at work in NYC where we are from we used to work for the largest health care union in the country we were friends for years but once we started dating we got a lot of unwanted attention we were both the popular people at the job for different reasons. But once the hate got to loud to where we were getting called in to secret meetings about our personal life we new we had to get out of there. We started a clothing line called Painfully Gifted Apparel we did the marketing the photos we bought cameras and everything and it was doing ok but the overhead with a clothing line is crazy. So we started to think what can we do that has a small overhead we already had cameras and took really good photos because we live on YouTube so photography was the natural next step, we got really good and started building a studio with someone and they stole the money so we went back to the drawing board. We decided to quit the job after we got in a car accident and take the money and move to Atlanta in 2014 we were looking to grow our business here and it was extremely slow I had to get a job which felt like the end of the world and it was the lowest paying job I ever had in my life I was delivering pizza for papa John’s in a fully paid for Chevy camaro it was the most humbling experience of my life. Eventually we had to move back home to NYC almost 2years after walking away from a secure job, and of all place into my mother’s house imagine being 30, not living with your parent for 14 years and moving in with your girlfriend and business partner. Hardest thing we ever had to do. But it turned out to be the biggest blessing in disguise we were able to sharpen our skills learn to shoot videos since all of our friends are artist edIt videos for worldstarhiphop.com and make a lot of money with no bills or rent. So after 5 years of that and getting our credit and everything back on track we moved we decided we wasn’t gonna let Atlanta win the fight we came back march 19 2020 1 day before they shut down the world for covid and we were like what the fuck are we gonna do if we can’t go outside smh. So we had to go back home since we new we could still work there and we set up a video tour and marketed it as a farewell tour it started out just being a 2 week trip fully booked and turned into 2 months of shooting 2 videos a day we made so much money we was like let’s go back to the A we got enough to Hold us down during the pandemic because we thought atlanta wouldnt be outside Turns out atlanta didn’t give a damn about COVID so we got active on social media and found new clients the first one was Otto the Director he’s bow wow camera man he ended up hiring us to shoot 2 video in 1 night called raris and porches and 905 a week later and it’s been up since then

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It’s been crazy finding clients staying busy through COVID switch directions with the business, you gotta be able to adjust because the game is always evolving. You have to learn to become valuable in more ways than 1. For example when it slows down we offer other services like gaffing or dp work which means we either handle lighting for other videos sets or we will be hired to shoot the video by the director. You have to have a ton of skills to stay a float one skill ain’t enough to stay fully independent at least not for us it’s not.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Direct music videos, short films , photography and most recently AI BEAST

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Freedom never working for anyone again

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Painfullygiftedvisuals.myportfolio.com
• Instagram: @painfully_gifted_visuals