from this room
by jmritz

Comment:
Beautiful, unexpected, original. Landscape as life. Life as landscape too. Yellow thumb for you. 9. Thank you.

The Brook
by Phocal

Comment:
Love the picture because its vibrant and interesting, and offers an unfamiliar point of view. Some might argue it's not a landscape, but I've seen their landscapes and you'd do well to ignore them, just as you have. Lovely tones too, but the best thing is it's something original and thoughtful. Good for you. 8.

Landscape with geese
by Kathyc

Comment:
Well, that's a photograph doing all it can to be not very interesting. The foreground detracts from the background and the background detracts from the foreground. I can't find anything to admire in this one, I'm afraid. Sorry. 3.

Lakeside
by chazoe

Comment:
Nice if fairly standard composition. Unusual tones, but that's a good thing given the otherwise uninspired point-of-view. 6.

portrait
by Mike

Comment:
This is very nice. Fills the senses; all of them, by suggestion, not just the visual. Smells, sounds, all that. Well done you. 7.

From Asia to Europe in 20 Minutes
by dwyllie

Comment:
Most landscapes are boring, and this one has nothing much to suggest otherwise. It's a competent enough photograph, but of nothing of interest. Light tower, ferry and distant skyline; it really doesn't do justice to this wonderfully exotic, vibrant location. But for a few visually insignificant minarets and domes, it could be Blackpool or somewhere equally drab and dull. There must be a more ambitious and original point of view than this. 5.

Area Closed
by dtremain

Comment:
Nice light but not much of interest beyond that. It feels a bit two-dimensional and short on ambition as far as point-of-view goes. Safe enough as a landscape photograph, but safe only reaches as far as middle of the pack. Safe just can't get you any further than that. 5.

Atlas 5 Rocket Launch
by Ja-9

Comment:
It's interesting and dynamic. The verticals all work very nicely and the rocket is positioned plumb in Position A (excellent timing by you). All in all a splendid orchestration of static versus action, and thus way more interesting than the average 'launch' shot. 7.

My backyard
by Kroburg

Comment:
A well composed landscape but with nothing much else to recommend it. A harsh judgement I know, but even allowing for the fact that most landscapes are boring and passive, this one is still resolutely limp and lacking in any hint of originality. Can you really be satisfied to do nothing more than what so many have, alas, done before? It's a safe landscape, ticks most of the landscape boxes, but they're all empty. 5.

Black Dogs Are Difficult To Photograph
by posthumous

Comment:
Don, you're a very difficult bloke to review. I mean that as a compliment.

Nobody else has mentioned it, but The Black Dog is, as I'm sure you're aware and I presume were intending, a metaphor (courtesy of Winston Churchill) for depression.

So I'm stripping away the photographs and addressing only that: the sense of your poem as a reflection on depression.

Black dogs are difficult to photograph.
They explode everything around them with light.
They get into the darkness of your own head.
Photographing a black dog is like exploring every detail of a shadow.
But a black dog can be even darker than a shadow.
In trying to see the black dog, you enter a blindness.
You get tangled in darkness.
You're suddenly afraid of what you're facing.
You forget how to see. You forget what holds you to this world.
But then the dog reminds you with her leash, whose fluctuations lead you home.

I think the Black Dog Institute would do well to have your poem on their masthead. It touches all the places that depression does, and concludes with a scent of salvation.

Thank you.