CORVALLIS - The curve of a country road, a ferry crossing, a trestle.

A new photo exhibit by the Willamette Valley PhotoArts Guild considers the diversity of connections that make up Oregon's transportation system and chooses to tell those stories with the stark drama of black-and-white photography.

In honor of Oregon's sesquicentennial year, "A Journey Through Oregon in Black-and-White: Along Rivers, Roads and Rails" features about 80 photographs taken on, of or from the state's traditional transportation routes by photographers from Corvallis, Albany and Eugene.

"As the state's 150th anniversary year comes to a close, we thought what better way to focus our sights than on the routes that have connected Oregonians to their work and recreation over the past 150 years," said PhotoArts Guild vice president Dan Wise, who helped organize the show.

"While that past has undoubtedly been a colorful one, it has only been photographed in color for about half of its history," he added. "For this show we wanted to use black-and-white photography to connect Oregon's past with its present."

The exhibit will be on display Nov. 2 through 25 at LaSells Stewart Center, 26th Street and Western Boulevard, on the Oregon State University campus. The LaSells Stewart Center is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and during events on evenings and weekends.

A reception is scheduled for 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, at the center. Complimentary refreshments will be provided by OSU Catering and wine will be available from WineStyles.

The participating photographers took many different approaches to the task of capturing the essence of Oregon byways in black and white.

"It's quite a variety," said show organizer Rich Bergeman.

Even more striking than the modes of capture, which ranged from the newest digital technology to old-fashioned box cameras, is the diversity of places shared in the exhibit.

Small groups from the guild often take trips to scenic locations such as the Cascades or the Oregon Coast. Recently, a group traveled by train to Sumpter, in eastern Oregon, and several images from the trip will be included in the show.

Bergeman, a retired Linn-Benton Community College instructor, is fascinated with the melancholy of abandonment. He uses a historic platinum printing process to capture scenes of ghost towns and rural crossroads.

In the upcoming show, he plans to share a few photos of the Willamette Valley from a collection that he worked on during the 1990s while retracing the travels that legendary trapper and mountain man James Clyman laid out in his historic journals from the mid-1800s.

Wise will share images both from far afield and close to his heart, including a vista of lava beds in the painted desert near the town of Mitchell, an abandoned cedar boxcar along the Deschutes River near Maupin, and a portrait of his daughter Sarah as a teenager on a bridge near Crater Lake.

Wise works at Oregon Camera and is a freelance reporter and photographer for mid-valley newspapers.

An affiliated guild of the Corvallis Arts Center, the PhotoArts Guild was formed in 1988 to foster the growth of its members and promote the appreciation of photography as an art form.

The guild has about 40 members in all. More than 25 of them will be represented in the show.

This is the fifth show in the guild's Visual Heritage Project, a series of biennial exhibits that explore the variety of photogenic areas in the region. Previous exhibits have celebrated Marys Peak, the Willamette Basin, the Oregon Coast, and mid-valley communities.

The guild also hosts a "Camera obscura" booth each year at da Vinci Days, to help people understand the basics of capturing a photographic image.

Bergeman and Wise hope that this particular show will give people a chance to appreciate both the power and nostalgia of black and white images.

"It is a different perspective, a little bit of a challenge," Wise said. "(It) forces you to use your brain a little bit more."

"Black and white photography is more about a feeling you get from an experience," Bergeman added.