DNA is a media powerhouse featuring a full photo, video, & design team. We have a staff of twenty experts in the fields of photography, video, graphic design, web design, screen printing, event coordination, artist management, & branding. As a self proclaimed artist collective, we seek to not only provide businesses with great services, but leave a positive impact in our communities. We want to promote a lifestyle that includes thinking out of the box, creating instead of destroying, teaching balance, bringing people of all creeds & colors together, eating & living healthy, self empowerment, and most importantly - creating love.
DNA was founded on July 6th, 2006 by Derren & Ana when the two started dating. It was quite uncanny as Ana was slated to leave to New York to study & work in a month, but that didn't stop Derren from asking her out. Stating "I just want to make you happy" even though he knew she was to leave in 30 days. Lucky for him he made her a little more then happy because she decided to stay in Santa Barbara and create DNA Imagery with Derren. It all started out with a dinky point & shoot camera taking pictures & manipulating them in photoshop to make them "cooler". We coined it as Digital Art & this was our slant on being different from the rest of the photographers in town.
Derren had a background in photoshop, dreamweaver, & flash and DNA linked up with another up & coming web designer in town by the name of Kyle Smith. The three would go on together to try to make something from nothing. Getting small jobs here & there, but seemingly not hitting the pulse of the city. After a while DNA's photography caught the eyes of one of Santa Barbara's famed local designers Jill Johnson & she offered us a job to shoot one of her fashion trunk show openings at EOS Lounge in Santa Barbara. This is when people really got to see what DNA's capabilities were and consequently we were booked to shoot a weekly event called Bang Bang. DNA would go on to work a 4 hour shift from 10-2AM and then edit photos for 6 to 10 hours the next day every single week for $50 dollars. The hard work paid off as Santa Barbara soon started noticing the up & coming DNA team.
We started booking private parties in Montecito & slowly upgraded our equipment as the money rolled in. We stayed passionate about our work & put our all into every single job with the aim of continually bettering ourselves. We constantly learned new techniques as we pushed ourselves to the next level & found out that with each job there was always a new challenge. Soon we were shooting all the best events in the Santa Barbara area. It dawned on me at this point that a new business could be created based off of event photography. This is where DNA took a backseat and a new business called SB Nightlife was born.
We instantly garnered the support of several nightclubs & eventually at one point were shooting six venues in Santa Barbara on a weekly basis. We grew to over 80 employees in 5 cities across America in little over a year. The business model is still wildly successful in Portland & Atlanta today (ATL Nightlife & PTL Nightlife respectively). However, I realized being in the nightlife scene wasn't really what our hearts desired. We started DNA with the motto "Love, Passion, Photos" & creating a company that only focused on the nightlife with the motto "Work Hard, Party Harder" wasn't nearly as fulfilling. We love to party, don't get us wrong, but we love to help people more.
We learned from our experience with SB Nightlife we were immensely influential & that the message we were touting was not the best, so we went back to our roots. We dismantled the company to travel for a while and figure out our next step. We lived in South East Asia & traveled the region for nearly two years before returning to found DNA back on it's original principals. Now, a little bit older & hopefully a little bit wiser we hope to build a similar platform while voicing a positive message to our audience. We want to leave this life having bettered the world we came into. We can accomplish this by helping educate the youth, making people smile, bringing people together, & helping expose people to a mentality that puts our community in mind first. That's where we are currently and I hope you would all follow us along on our journey as we travel into uncharted territory.
Derren had a background in photoshop, dreamweaver, & flash and DNA linked up with another up & coming web designer in town by the name of Kyle Smith. The three would go on together to try to make something from nothing. Getting small jobs here & there, but seemingly not hitting the pulse of the city. After a while DNA's photography caught the eyes of one of Santa Barbara's famed local designers Jill Johnson & she offered us a job to shoot one of her fashion trunk show openings at EOS Lounge in Santa Barbara. This is when people really got to see what DNA's capabilities were and consequently we were booked to shoot a weekly event called Bang Bang. DNA would go on to work a 4 hour shift from 10-2AM and then edit photos for 6 to 10 hours the next day every single week for $50 dollars. The hard work paid off as Santa Barbara soon started noticing the up & coming DNA team.
We started booking private parties in Montecito & slowly upgraded our equipment as the money rolled in. We stayed passionate about our work & put our all into every single job with the aim of continually bettering ourselves. We constantly learned new techniques as we pushed ourselves to the next level & found out that with each job there was always a new challenge. Soon we were shooting all the best events in the Santa Barbara area. It dawned on me at this point that a new business could be created based off of event photography. This is where DNA took a backseat and a new business called SB Nightlife was born.
We instantly garnered the support of several nightclubs & eventually at one point were shooting six venues in Santa Barbara on a weekly basis. We grew to over 80 employees in 5 cities across America in little over a year. The business model is still wildly successful in Portland & Atlanta today (ATL Nightlife & PTL Nightlife respectively). However, I realized being in the nightlife scene wasn't really what our hearts desired. We started DNA with the motto "Love, Passion, Photos" & creating a company that only focused on the nightlife with the motto "Work Hard, Party Harder" wasn't nearly as fulfilling. We love to party, don't get us wrong, but we love to help people more.
We learned from our experience with SB Nightlife we were immensely influential & that the message we were touting was not the best, so we went back to our roots. We dismantled the company to travel for a while and figure out our next step. We lived in South East Asia & traveled the region for nearly two years before returning to found DNA back on it's original principals. Now, a little bit older & hopefully a little bit wiser we hope to build a similar platform while voicing a positive message to our audience. We want to leave this life having bettered the world we came into. We can accomplish this by helping educate the youth, making people smile, bringing people together, & helping expose people to a mentality that puts our community in mind first. That's where we are currently and I hope you would all follow us along on our journey as we travel into uncharted territory.
