Every year I do an advertisement campaign for Eleven, the Swiss outerwear-brand. It’s the coolest thing since they let me more or less do totally what I want. Every year we do something special and last year, I got inspired a lot by their collection, which has lots of colors and combos.
So the logical thing for me was showing as many color rotations as possible in one photo. Normally I hate doing sequences, but this time was different.
It was May when Steve Gruber and I got together at my local resort Hoch-Ybrig in Switzerland. There was a bit of snow left and during the afternoon I shaped the hip jump until Steve arrived to help as well. Around 8pm, I took the first photo and at 4am the last one. So we shot eight hours straight for this ad! Crazy.
After packing all the lights, stands, generators and stuff I jumped into my hippie-car next to the spot and slept on the bed in the back. Good times! Thanks to the Resort Hoch-Ybrig and Eleven for letting me do my thing.
Thomas Stöckli

About the shot

Biography
I was born on august 11th, 1978, which is also Hulk Hogan’s birthday – but that’s about as far as the similarities between him and me go. In 1992 I found my big love: snowboarding. That was pretty much a life changing experience, however, somehow the worst snowboarder in the crew always gets the camera, and so my second love found me. On my birthday, one week after I bought my first real canon in 2001, I had an accident which took me off my board for nine very long months. At the time it was a nightmare, but to cut a long story short: I couldn’t be happier with how everything has turned out.
Since 2001 I have documented snowboarding everywhere from the Alps, the Rockies and the Andes. I am senior-photographer at Pleasure Magazine, and work with clients such as Red Bull, Vans, eleven and Snowboard Mag. Nowadays, I live in Zurich, Switzerland, and I am pretty much into portrait, fashion and action photography in general. But whenever it's good outside, I go and get the goods or shred snow as if I am a 15-year-old kid again.
I get inspired a lot during my assisting-work by city-trips; riding my bike through the city, watching magazines, movies, looking at people, thinking, nature, beautiful things, girls... everything!