Hailing from the small village of Fiesch, Switzerland Silvano Zeiter grew up in the shadow of the Swiss Alps. Ever the quick learner, young Silvano was on skis as soon as he could walk—pretty much par for the course when your house is a five-minute stroll from the Fiescheralp gondola. Surrounded by such beauty, it was only natural that Silvano would learn to operate a camera at a young age—some of his earliest memories are of his mom’s big old Nikon SLR. He doesn’t recall snapping photos, but he does remember looking through the viewfinder while playing with the lens, daydreaming while watching the world shift slowly in and out of focus.

The Zeiter family has a few apartments they rent out to visiting tourists. When Silvano was 13 years old, he came home to find a bunch of ski bags in their chalet. It turned out that the Völkl team had rented their place for a photo shoot, so he tagged along to watch them send a nearby road gap. The photographer in the crew took a liking to Silvano and handed over his second camerafor him to play with as the skiers jumped over random busses and cars. “All of a sudden, the cops showed up and we took off running. Me and the pro photographer were hiding in some bushes,” Silvano remembers. “But it turned out that my dad actually knew one of the officers, so he got us out of trouble.”

From then on, Silvano knew exactly what he wanted to pursue in life. A few years later, he got his first camera and an invite to tag along with a local snowboard crew. He was still on skis in those days and pretty nervous about going out with the local stars, but Martin Seiler and Seb Bumann made him feel welcome. Still, after the first session he wasn’t happy with the shots at all. After a couple of days spent avoiding the older riders, Seb tracked him down and told him how much he loved the photos. Silvano was surprised he was when Seb announced, “We finally found our photographer!”…

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