Use Your Words

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
— Winston Churchill

Today’s Writing Group prompt is an image.  Rather than post it right here for you to see, I am going to try to describe it for you.

I have noticed in commenting on other people’s posts during this challenge that my descriptors need work.  I default to “this is awesome/perfect/great/beautiful/etc,” without being able (or, maybe, really taking the time) to say more.  I also often fall back on “this was so, so ______.”  Weak sauce.  So I am going to put the picture after the jump and describe it for you.  When I’m done and you have a picture in your mind’s eye, click through to see how well it matches up with the actual image.  OK?  Ok.  Let’s do this.

This picture is a black and white photograph.  It appears to have been taken several decades ago, probably in the 1960s or 1970s.  There is a chessboard featured prominently at the bottom of the frame and the picture is taken from an angle level to the chessboard, which appears to be on a table.  In the very near foreground, the white king stands tall.  Its edges are slightly blurry because the focus in the picture is on the man behind it (we’ll get to him in a minute).  Two rows to the right of the king, and three to four rows back, the white knight stands in left profile on a white square.  In the back of the picture, a man leans down, his chin touching the chessboard.  He wears a black sweater, possibly with a white shirt underneath, and a blank expression.  He is not unhandsome.  The right side of his face from his chin to his eyebrow is obscured by the king in the foreground.  Due to the angle of his head, his forehead is slightly furrowed.  He is looking at the king, not at the camera.  His hair is combed neatly.  He has thick eyebrows and two moles on the left side of his face, one just above his full lips and one right below his eye.  His visage fills nearly the whole frame, save a bit of negative space above each of his shoulders and the slant of the chessboard in front of him.

Ok, I think that’s everything.  Got a picture of him in your head?  OK.  Click through.

How’d I do?