Tom van Schelven is an artist who divides his time between Manchester and the Netherlands, in fact in the body of his work you can feel a mood of immediacy, typically Dutch. His commercial collaborations always find the easiest way to get the message that the artist wants to communicate through; whether it’s immortalizing surfers for The Wall Street Journal, leading actors like Samuel L Jackson, or creating commercial campaigns for Nike, Sony or Renault, Tom’s images always know how to stand out and emerge from the crowd.

In the In Flight series, the connection between subject and lens becomes almost spiritual: the project shows a group of acrobats in the desert, who move harmoniously on the sand dunes and roll in the air, standing out against the backdrop of a bright blue sky.

When I’m shooting movement, there’s a lot of interesting bits I can photograph without directing. I wasn’t trying to shoot them at the apex of the backflip, it was more the moment slightly before and slightly afterward, when not everything is perfect in terms of expression or movement.

Many of the frames that you can see in the galley were not shot at the time you might expect. The result is a juicy work that represents acrobats as angels suspended in the sky.