Show featuring work of former educator opens Friday

What: “Scenes That Please My Eye,” photography by Stan Hosman

When: Show opens Friday during an artist’s reception from 5 to 8 p.m.

Where: Second Story Gallery at the Camas Public Library, 625 N.E. Fourth Ave.

Hours: The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday and Saturday. The show will run though Jan. 28.

After spending most of his life capturing moments in time with his camera, Stan Hosman will share some of his most treasured images with the community.

Hosman, retired Camas School District superintendent and well known locally as a camera buff, will display his photography during a show at the Second Story Gallery in the Camas Public Library.

The show, titled “Scenes That Please My Eye,” will include 30 photographs. Nearly all of the photos are images that Hosman has taken during the last few years. Some were snapped during travels to Amsterdam, Switzerland and Japan, where Stan and his wife Carol spent 2 1/2 years teaching at Seisan Junior College.

Other photographs in the display will have a more local slant, including one of a great blue heron taken at the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge.

“I deliberately tried to choose photographs so that I wouldn’t get all of the same things,” he said. “I wanted a variety of shots.”

Hosman, who was superintendent of Camas schools for nine years until retiring in 1982, said photography has been his primary hobby throughout his 27-year career in education.

With two sons, family vacations meant a lot of stops for “Dad” to snap a photo. He also took a lot of pictures of his children as they grew up, and now of his two granddaughters.

Recently, while arranging the family for another photograph, Stan said his son complained that he was “camera abused as a child.” Stan admits to having thousands of slides and prints.

His interest in the pastime began as a teenager when he attended Wapato High School in the Yakima Valley, leading to a studio job where he worked full time while attending Yakima Valley Junior College and what was formerly known as Central Washington College of Education.

As a paid photographer, he worked in the dark room, and took photos at weddings and during school activities. Back then, he said, he used flashbulbs the size of a regular 25-watt light bulb.

Now he takes digital shots of his subjects, usually birds or other inhabitants of the natural world. He also places an emphasis on textures and amusing compositions.

Hosman said, however, that he is “old fashioned” when it comes to manipulating the images through programs like Photoshop.

“I usually crop the photos and sometimes change the contrast, but that’s it.”

Stan will be available to discuss the scenes that have caught his eye at a reception during First Friday, from 5 to 8 p.m. in the gallery on the second floor of the public library.