All images copyright by the individual photographers

	Sleeping Bear by Zachary Scott There is something wonderfully unexpected about Zachary Scott’s Gallery Pick, “Sleeping Bear.” Rather than fill the frame with the power and imposing presence of a brown bear, Zachary allows the immense landscape to become part of the story. The sleeping bear appears almost small against the sweeping tidal flat and distant snow-covered mountains, creating a striking sense of scale and solitude. And that is what makes this photograph so intriguing––it invites us to imagine the story beyond the frame. Where has this bear been? What brought it to this quiet spot, and what will happen when it awakens? The warm brown of the bear immediately draws our eye, yet the vast landscape reminds us that it is only one small part of a much larger wilderness. “Sleeping Bear” captures a rare moment of stillness while leaving us wondering about the story that came before–––and the one that will follow. Congratulations on your Gallery Pick, Zachary! By Marie Costanza
	Corps de Ballet by d dargan teska Deb has given us a quiet, beautifully observed macro photograph. It feels less like a conventional botanical study and more like an abstract image about fragility, movement, and emergence. The extremely narrow plane of focus isolates the reproductive structures while allowing everything else to dissolve into soft shapes. The sharp central stigma becomes the visual anchor. The curved filaments are the strongest compositional element for me. They sweep through the frame like tiny figures, dancers, or branches. Their repetition gives the photograph rhythm. Deb has captured a limited palette, and this gives the photograph a contemplative quality and keeps attention on the delicate structures. The blurred foreground and background don’t simply provide separation—they create layers. I feel as though I’m looking into the flower rather than simply looking at it. At first glance, it’s clearly botanical, but the extreme abstraction makes the subject almost unrecognizable. The strength if Deb’s intention is expressive rather than documentary. The large, blurred arc entering from the right acts almost like a frame, while the sharp filaments extend into the open green space. This creates a nice tension between structure and emptiness. The large negative space on the left gives those tiny filaments room to “move.” This is as a strong fine-art macro photograph, particularly because Deb hasn’t treated the flower as a specimen. She’s used focus, blur, color, and gesture to transform it into something more abstract. The photograph turns botanical reproduction into a study of movement and vulnerability. It also has a very recognizable quality that I’ve noticed in photographs she’s shared with us before: Deb seems drawn to finding abstraction in ordinary natural subjects rather than simply documenting them. By Don Menges