Most people would consider it a crime to splatter a Ferrari with paint. Unless it's being photographed by Fabian Oefner. The Italian automaker graciously allowed the Swiss photographer to blast several hues of UV paint all over a brand new Ferrari California T, and damned if the car doesn't look better for it.
A Ferrari always looks fast. There's just something about the stance and the lines. The neon streaks that Oefner blew onto the car accentuate the roadster's carefully crafted lines. The result is stunning, and the car looks as if it's racing out of the darkness.
“When you think of a Ferrari you think about beautiful design, but you also think about speed, and I wanted to find a way to visualize both these things,” Oefner says.
The shoot took place last August at Ferrari headquarters in Maranello, Italy. Oefner and his team rolled a black T in a wind tunnel, waited until the wind speed hit 105 mph, and let the paint fly. Oefner used 30 gallons of red, yellow and blue UV paint and close to 40 UV lights. The car was largely obscured under the lights, and only took shape as the paint flowed over its sleek body.
To project the paint, Oefner developed a DIY hack created from small garden pumps hooked up to garden hoses lined with small holes. The pumps forced the paint through the tiny apertures, sending small, bright streams of color over the car. Some hoses were rigged to a scaffolding to really coat the entire vehicle. The filming happened with two different cameras over a period of three days. Oefner used a Phantom to get the slow-motion shots and a Arri Alexa for the rest because that camera played nicely with the UV lights.
Clean up was a bear, though. After each shot, Oefner’s team would spend up to an hour wiping the car down so they could turn it around and spray it with another color or cover another part of it.
This isn't the first time Oefner has focused on cars in his work. A couple of years ago he took individual photos of model car parts, then pieced them together in Photoshop to make it appear as if the vehicles were exploding. He likes working with cars but always tries to add an element of art or science as a final flourish. Oefner also likes the subject because he’s a car geek with a special affection for the fast ones. “There’s that boyish fascination that I still really have,” he says.
