Cate's Nose, originally uploaded by Borden Media.

Little by little I am adding photos that are some of my favorite pieces.
This one is probably my most popular on DeviantArt, right now it's at 230 favorites. I mention this because sometimes people get so caught up in the technicality of photography and nothing that wasn't taken on a pro camera isn't good enough for them.
This was taken two days before my SLR came, with my little compact Olympus SP-350. 8 megapixels sounds like nothing, now, but it was a wonderful tool and an excellent manual teacher.


( On a completely different note.. )

The Fairer Sex, originally uploaded by Borden Media.

When it comes to Chess, I love the photography of it. I'm a politics, strategic nerd, Chess to me is like a track star's marathon-- interesting, and complex, and worthy of attention to detail.

There are so many facets of Chess, and the artistic aspect that I think my title is perfect for it.

So when someone on dA said:
"i don't really get the title, but i like the shot "
I almost head-desked.
Then they said it could be brighter. As the photographer, I beg to differ, but on a completely different note from the aspect of light:
you're a flaming idiot.

My two cents.

Besties_4944, originally uploaded by Borden Media.

These girls are fabulous, unfortunately this photo is minus one, she was a bit late to the shoot and didn't want to jump off logs with heels on-- I don't blame her. One of many from that shoot.

"Elaine--". His voice came again, stern.
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, Jimmy!" I screamed, hands sweaty on the trigger. "No, Jimmy. You listen to me. Your gig is UP." By the end of the sentence my throat was dry and strained.
I could tell he didn't believe me; he was sneering, the twitch of the lips. Rage burned hot just behind my eyes.
"Come on, Elaine, you know you can't shoot worth shit." He tried a small smile, between friends. But I wasn't his friend. Not anymore. Not his lapdog, his doormat, his girl next door.
"Jimmy, I don't want to do this..." I could feel the wet tears on the ridge of my eyes. I tried, but I couldn't stop my lips from quivering. In fear. At myself.
"Just put the gun down, baby.., it's all okay, just put it down." I wanted so much to do as he said. Hell, I was used to it. My arms wavered with the black weight of Jimmy's semi automatic in my hands but resolve strengthend them.
"Shut up, Jimmy." I bawled back at him. "You can't make me."
"Just listen to yourself." His voice was desaturated of all his sweet pleadings, now. "Just put the fucking gun down. You could hurt somebody with that."
I pointed the firearm over his head and inwardly flinched as I pulled the trigger. I think I saw the explosion first, and heard the earsplitting crack seconds later. It rung in me, and if I had not already thrown up, I knew I would have again.
Jimmy looked above his head, to the torn metal shrapnel bullet hole. "Jesus." He breathed.
Cold adrenaline seeped over me.
"I know."
He peered at me through the dim light. "You're going to kill me in cold blood?"
I thought I had been past caring, but I bit my lip, and the hot tears spilled down my face. "Don't make me do this, Jimmy. Please don't make me do it." Just call me 'baby', again, smile again, oh Jimmy. The words I fought to say stayed just beyond my bravery.

He didn't reply. The fear rippling through me was pushing the impulse, staring at him, every second of his silence urging me to finish it. I couldn't see his face, just could hear his shallow breaths. "Jimmy, say something…" I moaned, trembling. The tears on my face had reached my lips and I could taste the saline on my tongue. All he did was shift in the darkness. I found my voice again, swallowing. "Just… say anything."

Perhaps later I could describe those moments as harrowing, when the light filtered in on Jimmy and I was left alone. It's not supposed to be that way, damnit. How dare he. Dust from the rafters shook loose. It was never supposed to be this way. I'm the hero. He, still in silence, was looking up at me, though, when it really mattered.

That beautiful face. So incredulous, never losing, always challenging, Jimmy was. He always had wanted to meet death with that face, and the fear in me screamed that he knew he was going to die, and was cheating me. He was ready, his face so set, my hand shaking.

Strands of hair stuck to my face in my humid fever. He was so ready. My knees threatened to buckle underneath me, fall to his level. He was always ready. My fingers were slippery on the weapon, and I knew he would die in his own silence. A slow rumble on the el train concourse above was beginning, louder each second. As each car above railed away, even louder still were his words. "You're going to kill me in cold blood?"
Damnit, Jimmy. His face. I should shoot it clean off, my fear whispered. The thunder of the tracks began in earnest, the light shuttered and unshuttered with each roll of a car. Jimmy was silent.

"You're going to kill me in cold blood?" I shook my head. And pulled the trigger.
Then, burst of the shot. Like a loud sotto clap it reverberated off the air, my shock opening my mouth wide with recoil. Too little, too late.
Perhaps not.
His figure was like a body on a cartoonist's board, waiting for a head, slumped against the dirty wall. It wasn't a clean shot, but it was a shot. I closed my mouth, salt tears still on my lips.

It was the parting shot, and I was done.
I didn't know which was worse, the blood that wasn't on my hands physically, or that I simply stood over him, sobs slowing, and the cold adrenaline setting in.
"You made me do it, Jimmy." My finger uncurled itself from the killswitch, and the cold weight of the gun slipped from my hands.
"I had to do it, Jimmy." I could feel it, the feeling that I had "taken care" of the only thing in my life that had been wrong.
I walked away. I simply placed one foot in front of the other away from him, and kept going.

It’s all so simple to me.

But you don’t understand, you can’t see, and you fight the confusion I see in your eyes like a battle you cannot win. Like a battle on unfamiliar ground, to a summit mapped but shrouded.

I can see your instincts fight, desperate to understand, to keep your grip on my slippery blade.

Because it’s mine, isn’t it?

Your bloody fingers are clenched and severed, holding on because it’s all you have left, all that matters. This blade suspended in the kinetic motions. Poised and barricaded from your pulsing heart.

Yet this weapon you arrested in your terror was not pulled by my choice. Your hold is slipping, not on this blade but underneath, and atop these foothills.

Weakening, wakening below your tread is sediment, in veins and traces you are equally desperate to understand. What is this struggle? Man versus nature, man versus man, versus me?

Oh, my innocent, Lleu, my bright one. So naïve. So desperate. You domesticity overrides feral instinct, your grip driven by fear and passion. It’s not your blood, but the very will in your veins that released in my lacerations. Not your own will that is distinguishable but your lifeblood, the conduit.

Your warmth, your kiln, is slowly losing heat, the fire in a dry arid wilderness devoid of direction. Oh, the intricacies of you. You are grasping onto the refuse, because it’s all there is left to you, this pithy inheritance. And what of me?

You terror is fueled by this sparse desert in your stalled ascent. You memories you bleed to me, pleading with me in your thin hope.

You have left the barest of visages. Your resistances, your fingers, so trivial, my love. You will lose so much. What is stranger, my despair or your desperation? My palm, the weapon in hand, trails to the capers of this all, vivid streaks of hypnosis. Your precious prize mutilated without fear. Without question and producing battle.

So gentle you are. So hewn and lacquered, you could never hurt me, your beautiful one. You fear to even trace the imprints of the siren, jaded, bladed piper. You hurt more than I to see your prize persuaded in such a diversion.

Perhaps, my drowning one, that is the battle.

I miss you.

I hate to say things like that, as I am sure you know.  I miss you like… no other. I miss you like ham and eggs. Hamandeggs. Like that. I cannot recall another time when I had missed someone as much as I miss you. I sit at my desk, and suddenly I will feel utterly alone, because that is exactly what I am.

I was reading a thread that talked about ‘praising the good boyfriend’. There was a post of how a girl made which described her man’s features and as I read that, I couldn’t help but smile. I thought of how I would describe you.

You have eagle brown eyes, most of the time of which are earnest and alert.

When you laugh, the skin around the corner of your eyes crinkle. I found myself, after a few weeks of watching you, looking for the smile and laughs in which you genuinely had lost yourself in the moment. Those are the times I knew I wanted you the most.

Your nose isn’t anything remarkable to anyone else, but since whenever I lean up to you, I have to look up at, I thought it needed some recognition. I love it when you bury your nose against me, or when you brush it against my cheek, or when you nuzzle me and tell me, as if you were sharing a second, that you were going to bite my nose. And so I love your nose. You cute, tan button of a nose.

Sometimes I put my head down, and I try to imagine myself back in the times you sat at a keyboard, typing away, and I was next to you, my head on the desk, hearing nothing but your typing—I was listening to you doing what you love. Sometimes you stopped, and there was silence. Those times you stroke my hair, and press your lips to my forehead. It was those times I wanted to know what ran through your brain.

I miss your small torso against mine; when I saw you every morning I just couldn’t wait to slip my arm around your waist, and show you off—my arm decoration. “Look, guys, my man my man has twice your brains, and he’s hotter, too.”

Your lips. Oh, dear, what can I say about your lips?

Half the time they taste like coffee, my love, but does not negate the fact that I still love them. Sometimes I just want to bite them, or keep them with me.

I cannot remember the last time we kissed. There were times I was very busy, and you’d pull me aside just to traverse my neck with those lips, and I thought “oh, god, don’t do this to me now,” because I know if you continued, I would give in completely to you.

I miss you hair and how it felt against my lips.

If you only knew how much I love you…

--Ruse