Photograph at chest height of a beautiful Black man in his thirties, a full beard and long fine braids, both forearms crossed in front of the chest, centred from the waist up. Behind her a mottled hand-painted faded indigo backdrop, grainy and soft-focused, definitely that colour and well below full strength, lighter behind her and darkening into the corners. She wears long sleeves and gauntlets over a plain high-neck column in bronze leaves *(warm)*, covering whatever it sits on completely and worn over a fitted base layer, with hanging strands of pink-toned seed pearls in ropes falling from it to the bottom edge. One large soft frontal source close in, so the metal throws long soft specular bands along its length that pick up the ground's hue at their edges, and each strand carries its own small highlight. One thin dark line at the lash root and the rest left soft, hair lacquered flat to the head. Three tints and a skin tone — the metal's temperature, the strands' cast and the ground's hue — every one of them held well below full strength, and the frame still reads as a colour rather than as grey. Everything soft except the crisp edges of the strands. Rapt and inward, eyes closed, mouth closed, entirely calm and still.