Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent LaForet presents the latest images of his ongoing series “Air” capturing shots of Los Angeles at night from 10,000 feet above the ground. Over the past few months, LaForet realized stunning aerial photos of San Francisco, Las Vegas, and New York. “When the assignment came up to photograph the city at night, I said, ‘this is the time to go up really high and make some really unique images and that is really, organically how AIR was born,” LaForet says in the film. “It’s something I’ve wanted to shoot since I was 13 years old and I’ve waited 27 years for the technology to catch up.”
“To date, Los Angeles was by a wide margin the most difficult city to Photograph – and the one that made me the most nervous.” wrote LaForet on storehouse “As you can imagine, with each city, it becomes more and more difficult to find & to make unique images.”
“The challenge with LA stems from the lack of a cohesive downtown (there is a tremendous mix of architecture both in terms of when the buildings were built and therefore a great variance in architectural styles, a significant variance in height and most notably a lack of a clear nucleus.)” he adds. “Perhaps the single biggest is the fact that the Los Angeles metropolitan area has a total area of 4,850 square miles (12,561 km2), while the wider combined sm area covers 33,954 square miles (87,940 km2), making it the largest metropolitan region in the United States by land area.”
“The variance of the color of the lights is amazing! You can make out entire neighborhoods (Richer and poorer) based on the color of the lights. The more affluent ones have brighter daylight (blue balanced) LED lights – whereas the older less modern sections are still bathed in the orange glow of sodium vapor lighting,” concludes LaForet.
Future destinations set to be shot include London, Paris, Tokyo and more.
all images © VINCENT LAFORET – video courtesy of VINCENT LAFORET | via storehouse