About
IMX Studio
I am that, I am.
meet the founder
Ryan Sarakul grew up around cameras, his parents shared a love for camera technology, photo and video alike, and that quiet fascination filled his childhood long before he ever picked one up seriously. In 2006, dance pulled him in a different direction entirely. He became a competitive street dancer, performing and traveling internationally for years, learning rhythm, timing, and movement along the way.
For a long stretch of that journey, Ryan balanced two very different worlds: teaching kindergarten by day, while competing, performing, and traveling as a dancer on the side. In 2012, the camera found him again, he picked up his first professional camera, and photography slowly became more than a hobby. Everything dance had taught him about movement and timing started quietly shaping the way he saw through a lens.
Over time, Ryan stepped back from the competitive and performance side of dance, shifting instead toward holding community events and giving back to the culture that shaped him. It was during this time he founded Izakaya Squad, an international freestyle dance group built around community connection and relationships, rather than competition alone. He still traveled, but differently now, for production, for participation, for the outlet dance had always been, rather than the spotlight.
By 2018, he left teaching behind to pursue photography full time. What started as one path eventually grew into two. Today, Ryan is founder, lead photographer, and director at IMX Studio, and founder, media director, and media consultant at CRM Group, a corporate media production company helping brands like HubSpot, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Zoom bring their event media production and marketing campaigns to life. Two companies, one through line: an instinct for capturing a moment exactly as it happens, not staged, not forced, just real.
It Began With a Goodbye…
For most of his life, having a space of his own was just a dream, something Ryan talked about but never believed he could actually build. In his own mind, he wasn't someone who took action. He was a dreamer, and dreamers, he thought, didn't build things. They just talked about them.
His brother was his hero. Even while sick, he encouraged Ryan to travel, to be inspired, to keep creating. So Ryan did. He traveled, connected with dancers around the world, and came home with something he'd never had before, the confidence to make things happen for himself. In 2023, he held his first movement arts exhibition, a showcase of dancers, photography, and film gathered from his travels. He dedicated it to his brother, a celebration of life, and of everything his brother had given him the courage to become.
His brother was also Ryan's best friend and biggest supporter through it all. When he was diagnosed with Malignant Ossifying Fibromyxoid, a rare, aggressive disease with no known cure, Ryan spent every one of his brother's remaining days by his side. Somewhere in that time, something shifted. He wanted his brother to know he was strong enough to do it, to stop being someone who only dreamed, and become someone who built.
IMX Studio officially opened its doors on March 1st, 2024. His brother passed away just over a month later, on April 4th, 2024. He never got to see it finished. But he never had to, because it was never really about the space. It was about becoming the person who could finally build it. IMX Studio is what came from that, not just a business, but a symbol of love, and of ambition, built from a promise made to someone who believed he could, even when Ryan didn't believe it himself.