Variety found in 'Fine Grain' show

Where: Gallery Saintonge, 210 N. Higgins Ave.

When: Tuesday-Friday 10 a.m. -5:30 p.m. and Saturdays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., through Jan. 5.

So, a group of M.D.'s gets together and - no, this is not a joke - they realize they have something else in common. They all love to take photographs.

This is in the late 1970s. Lee Nye, the guy who shot the locally famous portraits of weathered old bar patrons that hang in Charlie B's, was teaching a photography course at the University of Montana. Some of the photo-docs coaxed him to critique their work above and beyond the call of class duty, and the Fine Grain Photography Group was born.

Flash forward to now. Those six original shutterbugs are still clicking, and four others have joined them. Nye is gone, dead in 1999 of a stroke, and Neil Chaput de Saintonge, owner of Gallery Saintonge, has assumed the role of mentor to the group.

Every fifth Wednesday since about 1991, Chaput meets with the photographers and offers his expertise on photo composition and presentation - and gives assignments for the next five weeks. Some of the results of their collaboration are on view in Chaput's gallery through the end of the month: Joe Weydt's "Orchard: Capitol Reef," a stark contrast black tree trunks tipped by delicate white blossoms; Dick Loepp's "macro" shot of snow cornicing over itself, casting shadows against the purest white; Jim Ullrich's vast bronze field of cracked earth spread around rust-colored boulders - Death Valley, Calif., says Chaput - a study in texture, color, shadow and light that draws the viewer's fingertips to its surface.

"They've done sunsets, abstract shapes, feelings," Chaput says. "We did the Carousel, Toole Street."

Most everyone in the group is a doctor, or used to be one. Most everyone is male, too - all except Jane Goffe, who works as an accountant, Chaput says. She likes to work with infrared film, which produces a grainy, dreamy effect, and which, in black-and-white, turns green to white, making for trees flocked with "snow" even in the summer, and which turns blue skies nearly black.

"Some shoot 35 millimeter, some do large 4-by-5s," Chaput says.

Some develop their film the old-fashioned way, dipping negatives and prints in chemical soups. Many, though, have embraced digital technology: "I guess because they've got the money," he says.

Paul Loehnen uses a "little point-and-shoot ditigal" to produce stunning photos such as his close-up of cobblestones in Erice, Italy. Roger Munro drips with color, his blood sky infusing the mountains and lake in his print with red.

"It's kind of fun," says Chaput, "because you get so much variety."

For a group that began with the portraitist Lee Nye, however, these photographers offer surprisingly few photos of people. In fact, there are none in the Saintonge show.

Chaput scratches his head over this one: Photographing people makes up about one in four assignments to the group, he says.

His favorite assignment over the years?

He pulls a photo by Joe Weydt from the window, one glittering with the blue neon of Tipu's restaurant and winking a streetlight in the background. Against the brick building, three bicycles.

"The last one (assignment) we did was bicycles. That was the best one they ever did. Unfortunately, the show was already hung."