Living the dream

Adventure photographer Celin Serbo on the journey to holding a most-coveted job

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For photographers, as for anglers, there’s always that one that got away. Rock climbing guide turned professional photographer and filmmaker Celin Serbo remembers such a shot vividly.

It took place years ago on a guiding expedition to Ecuador. He was belaying clients up a headwall on the Cayambe volcano. It was early morning and the sun was just beginning to rise.

“The sunrise was like, ‘Oooh’ … You could see down the entire cordillera [chain of mountains],” Serbo recounts. “I was debating [asking my clients to] wait a second … but you’re guiding.”

The one thing that never got away from Serbo was his dream to become a professional photographer.

At one time, he was a rock climbing guide in Estes Park who drove a rusted-out Toyota Tercel (and, later, a school bus, but we’ll get to that). Today he is a professional adventure photographer and filmmaker with clients that include Patagonia, Black Diamond and Prana.

Serbo readily admits that adventure photographer is a dream job. “At one point, it was a dream job — I dreamed to do it,” he says. Now it is his reality.

A self-described practical hard worker, Serbo left his hometown of Sedona by way of Flagstaff, Ariz., for college and then migrated north to Denver in 1993. At that point, he had never been into photography.

“I was given a medium format twin lens camera from my stepfather. That’s the first thing I learned on, developing my own film and doing my own prints and doing my best Ansel Adams ripoffs,” he says.

Serbo is a self-taught photographer and filmmaker, but if you wanted to stretch it, you could say Adams was his first teacher of sorts. Serbo picked up Adams’ books The Camera, The Negative and The Print then set about learning how to become a photographer. That plus a $9-per-hour darkroom rental in Denver put him on his path.

Then he got a job as a rock climbing guide for Colorado Mountain School, and he also got an SLR camera. Photography became a hobby while guiding. He took the camera with him on trips in Colorado as well as guiding trips to South America.

One time, as Serbo and friends in Estes gathered for a barbecue and slide show of their work, his friend Topher Donahue — already an established professional writer and photographer — encouraged Serbo to essentially go pro.

“He mentioned, ‘Hey man, you should send some of these in to Patagonia,’” Serbo says.

Serbo did, and he got published. 

Still, he couldn’t exactly quit his day job. He did leave guiding in 2004, but he took work driving a school bus, which allowed for a steady income yet still a good amount of free time.

Sitting in a coffee shop in Boulder, Serbo uses his hands to mimic scales, indicating how the photography and video work increased as his other work decreased. He started doing the photo and video work full time around 2008.

He has gone on to do mostly commercial work plus some editorial work for publications that include magazines like Outside, Sierra, Climbing and Rock and Ice. Serbo calls it a “small world” of people in those circles — a circle he’s now made himself a part of.

His work has taken him all across North America as well as places like Peru, Switzerland and Norway. (His favorite place? The Moab, Utah area.)

He’s also won numerous awards, including an honorable mention in the photo competition at the 2010 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival. How did he make it in a field where there are plenty of talented amateur photographers who would like to do the same?

“It’s half art, and it’s half business,” Serbo says, “Most people gravitate to the art and they suck at the business. … 

If you’re a good photographer and business savvy, you’ll do better than a super-talented photographer [who is] unsavvy business-wise.”

But Serbo’s skills run beyond business and art — he’s a decent athlete who can do the hiking, schlepping and climbing required to get the shot. He can also handle the complexities of organizing a crew for a commercial video shoot.

Serbo considers his own specialty to be creating an image, not simply capturing what’s out there.

“I’m not a good photojournalist,” he says. “I usually have an image in my mind and an idea ahead of time that I can go and create in the actual setting.”

This is just what Ansel Adams was referring to when he described previsualizing a shot. The effort shows in Serbo’s final product. A close look shows supplemental lighting on his subject that enhances the natural light.

“I feel like I’m actually creating something,” he says.

“He has an artsy perspective, a slightly unusual perspective that makes me and many others take a second look at his imagery,” says Chris Weidner, a freelance writer and climbing columnist for the Boulder Daily Camera. “The quality is outstanding. I mean, top-notch for sure.”

Weidner and Serbo met as climbing guides in Estes Park and have collaborated on stories for Climbing magazine.

“I think something that may not come across with his easygoing attitude is he’s a really calculated, smart person. He really thinks about everything he does,” Weidner adds.

As the appetite for video has grown among individuals and businesses, Serbo has moved more into video in recent years and quite ably.

One mark of a professional is someone who makes it look easy. The videos are clean and attractive, and they employ radio-controlled drones. But that’s one side of the camera — the side that the viewer sees.

“If you can see behind the lens, there’s six to 10 people back there,” Serbo says, describing the scene of a commercial shoot.

And looking at stills of Serbo’s trail running shots, try to guess how many takes he had to attempt before getting the runner in perfect stride while striking the perfect balance of sunshine and artificial lighting.

Success has meant that Serbo spends a lot of time working, which is a mixed bag.

“One of the challenges I’ve had since I’ve gotten into the photo/video [work] is remembering why I got into those subject matters and doing it myself,” he says, “I still love rock climbing, I mountain bike, I road bike, I trail run, I ski.”

Even at a professional level, there are still the ones that get away. While photographing an ice climber, Serbo squeezed off some beautiful shots of the athlete on an ice fang. Just as Serbo was finished and putting his camera back into the bag, the fang collapsed, leaving him to see, but not record, the most dramatic moment.

“If I’d had [my camera] out, that would have been pretty amazing,” he says.

Visit serbophoto.com to see Celin Serbo’s still images and videos of outdoor adventure athletes.