another redo

 I didn't intend for these redos to become a "thing."  But I did another one and I was so pleased with the results I decided to post it.
This was not a case of not liking the original piece; I actually liked it a lot.  My intent when I made it was to use it as a jury shot, as it was rather big and dramatic.  But I absolutely could not get it to photograph well (and I took a million pics).  The top pic is the best I got, and the gold doesn't stand out against the black well at all.  Also, photographing it straight on like that you don't get a good sense of the 3D-ness and it's hard to judge the size. So even though I liked the piece a lot, it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do.

That wouldn't have caused me to redo it, except for one thing.  I realized after looking at it for a

while that it would have been more pinwheel-ish if I had put the arms that extend out right at the points of the hexagon that is the central structure of the necklace instead of in the middle of each face of the hex.  Then it occurred to me that the best way to do it would have been to make a tetrahelix that would be part of the central part of the necklace and then continue into the extending arm.  That would be a true pinwheel. And I rearranged the gold tubes to highlight the spiral better.  Also I'm putting together an application for an exhibit of mathematical art and that would be a much purer mathematical structure. 

So I redid it, and was quite pleased with the results.But that still left the photography problem.  I took lots of pics, basically redoing all the mistakes I had made with the original necklace.  Photographing it on the black form was the best way to get a sense of the size and dimensionality. But for some reason that I fail to understand, whenever I did that, even in the same room and under the same light conditions as the other shots, I got a picture that waymore washed out.  Finally, I turned out all the lights, so I only had indirect light from the window, and dialed back the exposure to make it even darker--and it worked.  I think it shows off the piece quite well.  No idea why.