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Photography, in the digital stage of life, has turn to a surprisingly artless business for amateurs: peculiarity, click, upload on computer … and send to distant friends or relatives.

But the dozen works in “Outta My Light!” — now on display at the Henry Art Gallery — emphasize that photography can be a lot more complicated than that, depending on the photographer’s tools and intentions.

As guest keeper Bridget Nowlin points out in her introduction to the exhibit, “Only two components tie all images together in this unique art form: light and time. One does not strait a camera, bank-notes, chemicals, or a lens to create a photographic image, but without light, in that place can be no photography (really ‘light-writing’). … The sort is true for time, as far as concerns without the time involved in an exposure, in that place would be no final image.”

The publish is drawn mostly from the Henry’s Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection; the Monsens are longtime Seattle photography enthusiasts who have donated abundant of their prize cluster to the museum. It spans the full stroll of the medium’s history, from the 1840s to the boon.

I had a chance to walk with Rowlin through the exhibit viewed like she pointed out what sparked her attract about the selections she made. The idea, she says, wasn’t to do a historical overview, end to observe how photography is “more than one agency.” If you’re scrutinizing about the methods behind photogravure, albumen typography vs. carbon printing, or the hazards of using wet collodion negatives, this exhibit is on the side of you.

Here are a few we looked at:

“Trichomanes Radians (Common Maidenhair Fern)” by Anna Atkins (1843). The steps behind this “photogram” are simplicity itself. Place a plant specimen on paper. Cover it in glass to restrain it below true pitch. Then expose it to sunlight. But for how long? “It just depends on the sensitivity of the paper,” Nowlin says. “And in like manner it depends upon the body the amount of light. Here in Seattle we have a lot of clouds, so sometimes the exposure can be a couple of minutes long. But if you have a clear day, it can be a couple of seconds long. Atkins was moving in England … so I imagine it was a little bit longer. These were scientific studies she was doing.” The potassium ferricyanide with which the paper was treated gives this wan plant silhouette its blue background color.

“Forêt de Fontainebleau” by means of William Drooke Harrison (circa 1865). Nowlin chose two prints from the same negative to illustrate a purpose in an opposite direction albumen prints vs. carbon prints. The image is of a masculine figure peering into in a sylvan scene — but the albumen print has a yellowing glow to it, while the carbon print is all sharp, shadowy blacks. “This is really a perfect illustration of the different qualities one can go,” Nowlin says. “The artists can choose how they want to express the final print.” The carbon print is much more stable. The albumen print would continue to yellow, she says, “if not properly cared for.”

“Gathering” by Robert ParkeHarrison and Shana ParkeHarrison (1994). This mixed-media operate (”Painting is certainly one component,” Nowlin points out) has a lot going on in it. But its starting point was a photograph of Robert ParkeHarrison, in level and tie, seemingly holding up a wild crowd of junk — chairs, a handsaw, a rake, a lamp. The husband-and-wife team then worked from one side “a lot of different processes,” Nowlin says, to get from the initial negative to the large-scale end rise. The press, mounted on wood paneling, has “a lot of texture to it, and that’s from the beeswax that’s then put on as the conclusive bed. of the work.”

Also featured: iconic work by Margaret Bourke-White, Imogen Cunningham and Seattle up-and-comer Isaac Layman.