Bainbridge Island photographic artist Harry Longstreet has been chosen for inclusion in the seventh annual Collective Visions Gallery Show in Bremerton for his image “Ferry to the Prom.”

Longstreet, a long-time island resident and retired television writer, producer and director, has had one-man shows, group shows and had images selected for more than a 160 national and international juried exhibitions. He’s a two-time Merit Award Recipient (Single Image) from Black & White Magazine (2010 & 2012) and Color Magazine (2011& 2012).

“Ferry to the Prom,” taken in 2012, features several Bainbridge High School students in their gala attire on the vessel awaiting departure.

“It was a very lucky shot,” Longstreet said of the selected image, which is actually the second incarnation of a project idea that began two years earlier.

“About two years ago I was on the ferry and I’ll be darned if there weren’t a bunch of kids going to the prom,” Longstreet explained. “I was about a ferry’s width away from them, but I had a long lens.”

He managed to get several shots that he liked, but was never completely satisfied with the end product.

“Ever since then I made sure that if I’m traveling on the ferry I had one of my cameras with me,” he said. “It was an awareness that there’s a chance for something, if you’re on the ferry in May or June. I was prepared, and here it was.”

Longstreet said he enjoys the photo especially for the stories that it reveals upon closer inspection.

“It’s a really interesting shot,” he said. “You can tell who’s on the first date with who, second date, third or whatever.”

He said that the students never saw him taking the photo and, though he later sold it to several parents, he did not know the kids or introduce himself.

“A lot of photographers insist on getting to know the person or setting up the shot,” he said.

“What I do is humanist realism. Some people call it street photography. It’s mainly about people and life,” he said. “What I don’t do is I never pose or set up a shot. I never shoot in anything except ambient light. The image you see is the absolute solid truth.”

In keeping with his pursuit of complete accuracy, Longstreet said he does as little post production work as possible to his images.

“Photoshop is not my favorite thing,” he admitted. “I might crop, I might adjust the contrast. I don’t care about lighting, it is what it is, but I certainly care about composition.”

The CVG exhibition juror is Jamie Walker, a noted Seattle-based ceramic artist and sculptor. The annual CVG Show is one of the largest and most prestigious art competitions in the Northwest. More than 280 artists from 70 Washington cities submitted 771 artworks for consideration. Of these only 116 pieces were selected for inclusion in the show.

Walker will choose the recipients of $7,000 in prizes going to 11 artists in multiple categories.

Additional prizes include a $2,000 purchase award by the Kitsap County Arts Board, a $300 People’s Choice Award and a $1,000 Best of Kitsap Award sponsored by the Cultural Arts Foundation Northwest.

The 2014 CVG Show promises to be bigger than ever this year. The gallery has put together a winter arts festival that will stretch for 3½ days and will include art movies, theatre arts and music in addition to the juried art show.

Collective Visions will host the artists’ and sponsors’ reception, the awards ceremony and the juror’s lecture in Bremerton’s Admiral Theatre on Saturday, Jan. 25.

While the reception is limited to ticket holders, the awards ceremony and juror’s lecture is free to the public. Tickets to the reception are $15 each.

The 2014 CVG Show includes artists from across Washington and opens at noon Saturday, Jan. 25 and is on exhibit through March 1.

Other Bainbridge artists with works selected for the show include Margaret Gibbs, Irene Yesley, Marilynn Gottlieb, Dinah Satterwhite, Lou Kostal, Nicholas Sherbina, Clyde Small and Richard Wilson.

A special end-of-show ceremony, which will include the presentation of the People’s Choice Award, will take place Feb. 28, and the evening includes a lecture by Greg Robinson, director of the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.

The exhibition closes March 1.

The schedule of festival events opens with the Admiral Theatre’s showing of “The Fantasticks” on Thursday, Jan. 23 and ends with “Menopause, The Musical” on Sunday, Jan. 26. Concerts by Pearl Django, a Gypsy Jazz group from Seattle, and Bremerton’s Eugenie Jones, a jazz vocalist, are planned throughout the weekend.

The festival will also feature an array of documentary art films, vintage movies and newly released independent films to be shown on SeeFilm and Admiral screens.

A complete schedule for the festival can be found at collectivevisions.com.