Brilliant Color Photography by Fabian Oefner – Mixing Art and Science

Fabian Oefner is a talented fine art photographer from Zurich, Switzerland. His photographs are brilliant and full of color and movement – and his emphasis is mixing science with art.

Listed here are samples from several of his photography series, including Millefiori, Liquid Jewel, Nebulae, Black Hole and Dancing Colors. Fabian has worked with several experimental techniques, including splashing acrylic paint, centripetal forces on paint, magnetic fields, sound waves, etc.

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Millefiori - Fabian Oefner

By Fabian Oefner, 2012 - Zurich, Switzerland

"The shapes, you see in these image are about the size of a thumbnail. They are created by mixing ferrofluid with water color and putting it into a magnetic field.
Ferrofluid is a magnetic solution with a viscosity similar to motor oil. When put under a magnetic field, the iron particles in the solution start to rearrange, forming the black channels and separating the water colors from the ferrofluid. The result are these peculiar looking structures."
Liquid Jewel - Fabian Oefner

By Fabian Oefner, 2013 - Zurich, Switzerland

This series is a continuation of my research of manipulating paint with different natural forces. In the “Black Hole” series, it was centrifugal force, that shaped the paints into colorful carousels. This time I used air pressure to create what I call “liquid jewels”.
The structures you see are modeling balloons covered with paint right after they have been pricked with a needle. The air inside the balloon expands explosively, throwing the paint in all different directions. What I particularly love about the images is that if you look closely, you can see, how the individual shades start to mix with each other, blue and magenta becomes violet, red and yellow becomes orange…within a few microseconds, the paint forms into the most beautiful color combinations…and then its gone again. What remains is the capture of that firework of colors, frozen in time…

Recommended: Amazing Photo Manipulation Art
Black Hole – Paint in Motion

By Fabian Oefner, 2013 - Zurich, Switzerland

"Black Hole is a series of images, which shows paint modeled by centripetal force. The setup is very simple: Various shades of acrylic paint are dripped onto a metallic rod, which is connected to a drill. When switched on, the paint starts to move away from the rod, creating these amazing looking structures.
The motion of the paint happens in a blink of an eye, the images you see are taken only millisecond after the drill was turned on. To capture the moment, where the paint forms that distinctive shape, I connected a sensor to the drill, which sends an impulse to the flashes. These specialized units are capable of creating flashes as short as a 1/40000 of a second, freezing the motion of the paint."
Dancing Colors

By Fabian Oefner, 2012 - Zurich, Switzerland

"What you see on these images are color pigments dancing on a speaker. By placing the pigments on a speaker and then playing music through it, the membrane of the speaker starts to vibrate, creating these funny looking figures. To capture the very moment, in which the pigments are lifted into the air, a microphone was attached to the flash system. Like this everytime the micro picks up a sound, it triggers the flashes."
Nebulae – Outer Space in Studio

By Fabian Oefner, 2012 - Zurich, Switzerland

What might look like a giant nebula or a distant galaxy at first glance, is in reality the glowing ends of a fibre glass lamp.
The images were created by taking long-time exposures of several fibre glass lamps (exactly, those ugly-looking lamps, that were extremely popular in the 90`s) moving around in a darkened room. Afterwards, severeal images were multiplied in photoshop to achieve the density of such a structure.
What I personally like about this project is how you can create an illusionist space with such simple means, that are familiar to everybody.