LAND SCAPE by David LaChapelle (1/2) | Phase One

Watch David LaChapelle in action!

We go behind the scenes on the production of "Refineries", the second part of David LaChapelle's project, titled "LAND SCAPE." In this video we visit David's studio and see his still life oil refinery models being constructed and then photographed on location.

"My goal is to get people's attention! It's very difficult to get people's attention long enough to look at an image and then understand what it means." - David LaChapelle

"My goal is to get people's attention. It is very difficult to get people's attention long enough to look at an image and then understand what it means.

What we are doing here is... You'll be seeing what we're doing here soon but they are the best model builders in the world who worked on all kinds of gigantic blockbuster movies throughout the years and we are fortunate enough to have them working on this project.

We are taking found materials. Normally these guys make super realistic models, and you can't tell, they are artists at work, that build models that look authentic and real such as Titanic.

In this project I want found objects and things that we normally recognize, so we are taking plastic bottles, this is the thing
you cook turkey in at Christmas time, tin cans, bendy straws, so I have limited the resources because I didn't want them to look like architectural models. It is completely different from our normal shoots which are figurative, I'm always using people in photographs but I love the still life.

The series started with the gas stations and now we have moved in to refineries. These are some of our inspirations, our references to what these will look like in the end. We are going to take a day to shoot each one. We shoot them at night, at dusk, in location, so we have a lot of work to do.

We have scouted the location. I have been out there before, we know which direction to shoot in. We are playing around
with twilight which is very quick to get that perfect balance between
the sky and the LED lights. We use thousands of them in these models.

The goal is first of all to make stunning pictures, then play with scale, but not only that, then you are playing with the idea that this is all garbage.

When we came out at the scout, the sky was full of clouds and looked pretty amazing but I think the sky looks better today that way. You just never know, you work with variables but a great thing about having a still life is that it is not someone who is going to leave,
like a model or a celebrity or something. We will do it again until it is perfect.

There is about, literally, 5 minutes where you get the perfect balance between sky and these lights, where the sky is glowing in really rich blue. I like the conditional occasion where you have that finite moment and that's it. You have a built-in time limit. Using that adrenaline to get the shoot done, use it to our advantage.

In any of my photographs I want to express something, say something, communicate. For me the picture is not finished until a viewer connects with it. That's the magic of art in general, communicating something to someone else.

Of course, like a lot of people I'm thinking about what is going on in the world and the sort of auspicious time that we live in in terms of environment, we're on the precipice in so many areas. A very scary time if you are aware of our impact on the environment. For me it all stems from the beginning of the industrial age and the discovery of fossil fuels. It only happened in the last hundred years.
It has been this really dramatic shift in the atmosphere caused by humans' use of fossil fuels. What represents them for me are these gas stations. Are they inherently evil? No. They are neither good nor bad. We are all using it. It is giving us our quality of life. Everything from medicine to transportation allow us as human beings to populate the planet.

I don't want to tell people what to think. I want people to figure things out for themselves and I want to be clear in what I'm thinking but I don't want to preach."

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Watch part 2:
   • LAND SCAPE by David LaChapelle (2/2) ...