Liquid Jewels: Photos of Paint-Covered Balloons Milliseconds After They Pop

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Back in March, we shared Swiss photographer Fabian Oefner’s Black Holes series of photographs showing paint being flung outwards by a spinning drill. We told you then that Oefner’s stated goal was to “harness elemental forms of natural phenomena and capture them in the most stunning way possible.”

His most recent project takes another stab at that goal, this time using paint and modeling balloons to create a series of photographs he’s calling Liquid Jewels.

Like Black Holes, Liquid Jewels is simply “a manipulation of paint with different natural forces” — in this case, air pressure. To create the photos, Oefner covers modeling balloons with thick layers of acrylic paint, and then photographs them the instant after he introduces the balloons to his trusty needle.

When the balloon explodes, the paint is thrown in different directions, mixing and creating beautiful shapes and new colors in the process:

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“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,” writes Oefner. “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 it’s gone again.”

What he’s captured in that moment he calls a “firework of colors, frozen in time.”

To see more from Oefner’s work with paint, check out our previous coverage of the Black Holes series for some behind the scenes pictures. And if you’d like to browse the rest of his portfolio, be sure to pay a visit to his website here.

(via Colossal)


Image credits: Photographs by Fabian Oefner

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