The white stripes on this orb are literally made out of ice.
To do this, I froze water in a condom and then attached it to the end of an orange acrylic tube illuminated by a torch.
The whole process for this photo had to be planned and timed precisely.
The 'ice light' has been sitting in my freezer for about a week.
While I was driving home from work yesterday, I noticed the sky was clear in all directions and the moon was just a slither so I thought, hmmm this is the perfect time to go and test it out.
I got home, checked my astrophotography app and saw that I needed to be at the location and ready to shoot at around 7pm as that's when the sky was completely dark and the Milky Way in a prime position. I packed the car and just before I left, I quickly wrapped the ice in a thick folded up towel and placed it inside a cooler bag and then hit the road. The journey took about 40mins so I was pushing it to get there, set up, frame the shot and test the ice, but I arrived on time and everything worked beautifully.
First, I did a few test shots with the ice mounted on a black aluminium tube. When happy, I decided to attach it to an orange acrylic tube. It was during this changeover, that I noticed the ice was melting rapidly inside the condom, so I had to be quick. I secured the ice onto the orange tube, ran around the rockpool and created this hand-drawn orb. As I was walking back to the camera to check the photo, the ice gave way under its own weight and snapped...so that was that.
I went and checked the camera, saw the photo and smiled as I'd actually managed to get the one white and orange image that I was after.
I do have the first ice test shots to edit yet but this is the one I was most happy with.
This is a single exposure:
10mm, f/4.5
ISO-3200, 37secs
Edited in Lightroom
See pix of the ice light below:
Check out some of my other work at instagram.com/rod.evans.visual