Commercial Photography Winner: Scott Serfas

This image was created for Transworld SNOWboarding magazine, where it landed on the cover. “I shot these components at 10 frames per second,” photographer Scott Serfas says, “and merged them into one in photoshop.”

Serfas gives credit for the graceful arc to his model, professional snowboarder Devun Walsh. “He’s doing a switchstance backside 540,” Serfas says. “That means he takes off going backwards and rotates one and a half times. What’s special about this image is Devun’s style: he barely moves in each of the frames. Being smooth like that is the hardest part for the rider.”

Serfas, who has done commercial and editorial photography throughout the world for 18 years, has made a specialty of snow-, surf- and skateboard pictures near his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. “I learned the hard way,” he says, “trial and error while shooting film.”

>In recent years he’s gone digital: he shot this photo with a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and a 200mm lens. But for the shoot itself he still takes an old-fashioned approach. “It was made just outside of Whistler, British Columbia, in the back country,” he says. “We drove to this spot on snowmobiles. I doubled Devun up to the top on my sled and then drove back down to the angle I wanted to shoot from. The first time he tried this he didn’t quite land properly, so we shuttled back up and he tried again. It took about an hour to build in the run and shoot both attempts.” The second one was, as they say, “a wrap.”