Unveiling Carlos Imani's Path from Parties to Professional Productions
Photos by Susan Fried
Carlos Imani of the Elite Collective stopped by recently to talk with host Trae Holiday on The Day With Trae about his creative journey from selling prints as a side hustle to becoming Executive Producer of Elite Collective.
The halls of Seattle Central College was where Imani first began to make money off of his photography.
“My side hustle was taking pictures of people, running to Kinkos up the street on Broadway, printing them out, coming back down, and selling it to them,” Imani said. “That just kind of turned into a little 30 bucks here for food and whatnot.”
He was a part time photographer, going to parties six nights a week, meeting new people, and capturing moments at events. It was only a matter of time before Imani joined the celebrations and started throwing parties of his own. He said the mindset that led him to the Elite Collective was that he “just never said no.”
“Every time I would do a photo for someone, it's like, ‘Oh, hey, do you know someone that can do graphics’ because that photo has to live somewhere,” Imani said. “So it was like either graphics, a flier, a business card, a poster, a website, or ‘do you know someone that can do video?’ It was just kind of one of those things, I knew people from just being around and I just started collecting talented folks.”
By 2011 it was no longer a side hustle for Imani and the Elite Collective. They were beginning to develop their services — the Smile Patrol was one of them. Spawned from the back and forth concert photography hustle, Imani had to come up with a way to produce prints at a faster pace.
“We'd run to Costco, print them out and it would take a day or two to get them back. We're trying to find out more of the instantaneous thing,” Imani said. “You know, we're doing stuff in the club, on the HP printers, but it would take like 10 minutes to print out an 8x10 and all that kind of stuff. That's what kind of spawned the Elite photo booth originally, now it's called Smile Patrol.”
Imani described the photo booths as the thing that “kept the doors open” as they began to create relationships with new people and learn new skills. While they were honing their skills, Elite Collective started to explore live streaming and virtual or hybrid events for clients, new territory to navigate for the team.
“It's kind of like this double edged sword where there's a lot of professionals and other AV companies have been doing it for years — they got the Microsoft contract and then I'm gonna go to these nonprofits and give it to them for free,” Imani said. “There's no space for us to learn, because you have to do it for free while I'm trying to do it to pay bills and pay my people. But we were able to navigate that space and capitalize on those opportunities, and then look to grow it.”
In March, Imani started a seminar working with folks from the state to help get their businesses set up. He said a big thing for him is the educational side, teaching students so that they can teach the next person and continue to open the door a little wider each time.
“Representation matters, and we're like almost in reverse,” Imani said. “Sometimes people in those spaces need to see a production company that doesn't look like a traditional production company. It was dope to be in that room that was literally for us, by us type of thing. There's some apprehension of folks just because you don't see it a lot. We can do it, we can show up, we can make that happen.”
Imani emphasized the importance of authentic storytelling. He said that so often people don’t feel like telling their true story, especially if they’re across from someone they don’t trust or have some apprehensions about.
“We're telling our stories, we're going to take back our narrative, we're going to do it in a powerful and uplifting way,” Imani said.
Coming up for the Elite Collective, is educational initiatives with organizations like Northwest Film Forum and the William Grose Center. They are providing classes and programming opportunities for youth, particularly from Black and Brown communities, to learn about audio-visual production. Imani said they are also trying to facilitate shadowing opportunities for youth at iconic events such as Black Wall Street.
“We'll be able to have those students who were in the classroom going to those events,” Imani said. “We want to pass this on to somebody right? And that's the whole point. If we're not doing it to pass it on. It's like, what are we doing it for?”
To learn more about Elite Collective visit their website at theelitecollective.com.
For more stories on authentic creative empowerment, tune in to Trae every weekday at 11 am on all Converge Media platforms and The Day With Trae YouTube Channel.
