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Travis Rice on course after the Red Bull UltraNatural event. British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Jake Blauvelt spends a lot of time here, the Whistler Backcountry. British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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This day was windy, but it would always stop for a bit so the riders could take their turn hitting the jump. Unfortunately for Benji Ritchie and fortunately for me the wind picked up just before he hit the lip. British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Because of weather great days like this are few and far between but when the clouds part there is no where else I’d rather be. Travis Rice, Alaska. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Late in the day surf inspired slash courteous of Bryan Fox. Alaska. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Shuttles to the top of mountains via helicopter never gets old, does it Jake? British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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I stopped for a break on the way to work one day to snap this photo. Not a lot of people can say they ride a snowmobile to work. British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Peter Devries with an air reverse. It’s a lot colder and more crowded than it looks. British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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It’s rare to watch Jeremy Jones snowboard from on slope, so I wasn't going to miss this rare opportunity. Alaska. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Late evening at English Bay, thousands of spectators watched Ryan Decenzo nollie flip over this barge gap. British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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During the making of The Art of Flight I wanted to incorporate a shot of the helicopter into a photo of John Jackson riding a line. I wasn't expecting the pilot to get so aggressive. Photo: Scott Serfas
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This photo of John Jackson is taken around 9pm. The light in the mountains can get pretty unreal sometimes. Alaska. Photo: Scott Serfas
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I helped shovel this jump in the clouds for an entire day without knowing what it looked like. The sun broke one afternoon so we headed back to the zone. It wasn't until I rode over to the side to shoot that I realized the size of this gap. Travis Rice, Alaska. Photo: Scott Serfas
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One of, if not the last photo I shot during the making of the Art of Flight. The trip started off great and got better and better each day, right until the last moment. Travis Rice, Alaska. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Sometimes its great to get out in the streets and mix things up a bit. Brandon Cocord, Michigan. Photo: Scott Serfas
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It was a crazy night in Nicaragua and this storm was heavy. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Surf board and surfer. Nicaragua. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Bruce Irons is a maniac and I’d say this photo represents that pretty well. Mexico. Photo: Scott Serfas
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When it’s on, there is no where else in the world like it. Parker Coffin, British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Rave or Skatepark or both? Gap to front board. Ryan Decenzo, Ontario. Photo: Scott Serfas
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The joy of winning. Nicolas Droz, Gigi Ruf and Bryan Fox. British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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Some people are born with style and Jake Blauvelt is one of them. British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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A multiple image photo of Brandon Semenuk. He spends a lot of time in the dirt so I thought this image fit appropriately. British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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If you’re prepared sometimes your rewarded with a moment that you could never recreate. Anthony Messere, British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
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I laid in the dirt ready to shoot this photo for 20 minutes while Thomas Genon rolled up and down the lip of this jump, trying to wrap his head around trying this front flip. British Columbia. Photo: Scott Serfas
I was born in the suburbs of Vancouver where nothing separated me from the North Pole but a stained wooden fence and crushed rock. At age sixteen, I was abducted from high school by an unsuspecting church organization and forced to ski moguls and perform daffy’s off lemmings leap under the 7th heaven chairlift – the original stimulus for my interest in air time photography.
Overwhelmed by the vast terrain and deep powder of the two mega resorts, I escaped the grip of skiing church group and acquired my first real snowboard. Later that year, I moved into a friend’s VW van that they would park nightly underground, below the conference center, where they would steal power from the last stall of the third floor to heat the ’73 Westfalia. I subsisted on leftover food from the Rendezvous restaurant a top Blackcomb Mountain and wore clothing left in the lost and found. During the early 1990s, I acquired my first Canon camera when a drunk French-Canadian freestyle skier, being pursued by the RCMP, stashed it along with twenty rolls of unexposed Fuji Provia and a half bottle of Rye Whiskey in stall number three of the Garfinkel’s washroom. My destiny was sealed. After exposing all the film shooting up-and-coming professional snowboarders (Devun Walsh, Kevin Sansalone and Rob Dow) on Whistler Mountain, I mustered enough courage to submit the color slides to Concrete Powder magazine.
From my first photo published in Concrete Powder, my career really got legs of its own. And in 1998, the world’s largest and most prestigious snowboard magazine, Transworld SNOWboarding, recruited me as a senior photographer. Now, 13 years later, I still work for TWS as one of only four seniors, doing what I love.
For more from Scott Serfas, check out his site. And be sure to follow him on Instagram and Like him on Facebook.
