Dean West doesn't take a photo. He makes one.

For "Beverly Hills Gallery, February 25, 2016," the image might look like he snapped it while driving by a gallery, but it's actually a composite of 19 photos he spent two weeks creating. “That’s if you don’t count the casting call,” he says.

Creating his elaborate tableau started with finding the perfect background. West chose a building near LA's Gagosian Gallery with an expansive white wall. He shot it in nine sections with an ALPA 12 Max large format camera fitted with an 80 megapixel digital back to maximize resolution. He combined the images in Photoshop and inserted a palm tree, sidewalk, and window for texture. "The space itself needs to be able to stand as an image on its own before I move on," he says.

That done, West worked with an illustrator to sketch the scenesters you'd see at an opening—the art collector, the selfie-snapper, a model or two. The Australian photographer wanted to convey the often grandiose atmosphere of such an event. "You spend a lot of time at a show like this looking at who else is there and what they’re wearing,” West says. “It ends up becoming more a scene than a show."

Once he knew what he wanted, West spent a month selecting models before inviting them to a day-long shoot on a rooftop studio downtown. A stylist helped get everything exactly right before West photographed the models against a white backdrop illuminated by sunlight, strobes, and reflectors. West combined everything in Photoshop and sent the final image to a photo retoucher for that final sheen.

West's highly stylized image is an incisive caricature of the LA art scene. You rarely see so many magnificent details in life, lending the image a touch of the hyperreal. He could have photographed a real gallery crowd, but it wouldn't be the same. West is more interested in conveying how a place feels than how it looks. Sometimes, that means making it all up.