Sebastian Staines

Having given the rig-ma-roll of ‘The Standard Life’ a good shot after university, I found out quite quickly that it definitely wasn’t for me. I met some foreigners in Cape Town who convinced me that selling everything I owned and moving to Europe was a great idea!

So I did just that! I moved to the Netherlands in 2016 and realised the notion that if you put yourself in the way of things, things start happening. One year quickly turned into four and what initially started as a ‘Supertramp’ dream, very quickly, had me on another path.

Technology and gadgets have always been a passion of mine; more than likely bred from spending years in my Grandad’s workshop building model airplanes and tinkering with his collection of vintage Jaguar’s. I got my first laptop in 2004 and quickly installed a cracked version of Adobe Photoshop CS2 after seeing what the pros were doing with the software in photography magazines.

Now earning Euros I was able to buy my first decent camera and a subscription to Adobe Suite. Like throwing a dart at a map I also became quite well-traveled, making short films of my exploits which started getting attention. My first paid job was a wedding in Spain and then shortly after, a number of events across the Netherlands. I started working almost full-time for a surf brand (Surfana) just outside of Amsterdam while continuing to pick up more and more side gigs.

By the end of 2019 things were going well. My portfolio and client list were starting to take shape, so I decided to do a ski season in Switzerland and give the freelance content creator hustle a go there. I landed a number of jobs shooting ski schools and one mega job to film a week-long event for W Hotels. And then COVID…

Not knowing how the future was looking, I decided to scamper back to South Africa to spend my final days on earth with my family. As we know now, the world didn’t end and I had been given the perfect opportunity to really hone my drone skills during the lockdowns.

As everything slowly started reopening in South Africa, so did the film, photography, and particularly drone work departments… but I needed to finish my ski season that got cut short in 2020. So I headed back to Verbier, Switzerland, skied big lines, and waited to see what the world would throw at me next.