Gray Malin: An unusual lens on the world's most exotic locations

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California-based fine art photographer Gray Malin has enjoyed a sharp trajectory to success since he began selling his prints at a Los Angeles flea market almost ten years ago.

The 30-year-old first came to public attention in 2009 with his series Prada Marfa, which depicted cowboys and mules alongside an art installation of a Prada store in the rural West Texas town of Marfa.

Since then, Malin has developed a signature style based around riotously colourful and meticulously composed shots of beaches and seaside scenes around the world, often from a bird's eye view.

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His photographic anthology, Beaches, was a New York Times bestseller this summer, and his Instagram account now boasts more than 200,000 followers.

Malin's latest images, entitled The Art of Living, form the third part of his series Follow Me, a video and still photography collaboration with Le Meridien hotels. Previous instalments in the series have been shot on location in Bhutan and Barcelona.

The Art of Living was composed at the hotel chain's Bora Bora resort in French Polynesia and is now being displayed in an exhibition at Le Meridien Piccadilly, in London, until the end of October.

Arresting compositions depict "rooms" floating on Bora Bora's crystal blue waters, with office furniture, a living room and a dining table set up on a clear glass platform, creating the illusion of a "home from home".

The theme behind the series is "unlocking destinations through an unexpected perspective", says Malin.

An accompanying making-of video shows how Malin achieved his surreal set-ups, the fruit of months of painstaking planning.

"I think people don't realise how much hard work goes into a single photograph," he told W Magazine earlier this year. "I hate when people ask if I use a drone or if I create some of these situations with Photoshop."