#5 Tenebrous

DDW March Challenge #5 Tenebrous

I've been wanting to try a natural light shot of a ring against a tenebrous background, in this case a piece of cardstock. Between meetings at work, I decided to attempt it using my wedding ring, with the only light source from a partially shaded window. I then tweaked it a bit to darken it and bring out the gold color. My friend Dorothy, a fine arts jeweler, made this ring in 1996 and added the diamond a few years later. She has since passed on; I have several gifted pieces of jewelry from her, but this one is my favorite.

Tenebrous Quote (in memory of Dorothy):

“She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul."

― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and the Congo Diary