Mike Ault practices art of black and white photography

Many of us got our start in taking pictures - "snap-shots" if you will - when we received our first Kodak Instamatic camera.

The difference between the vast majority of us and Mike Ault, however, are the steps we took next.

What separated potentially boring, out of focus or poorly framed photos from the works of art Ault, Larry Conboy and Gareth Davis currently have on display in "Perspectives in Black and White," at the Eastern Washington University Downtown Student Art Gallery in Brewster Hall, is a passion for perfection.

Among several of his works that hang on the gallery walls is a shot of a railroad tank car sprinkled with a fresh dusting of snow Ault titled, "Canned Heat."

Ault's mother gave him a Kodak Brownie camera because there was a sale on processing film. "I still have it," Ault, a former Cheney firefighter, now living on Hood Canal said.

The photography passion was further fueled by a print shop owner who had a darkroom in his business in Ault's hometown of Grandview, Wash.

"Here's how you make a negative and a negative is what you print with and blah, blah, blah," Ault said. "I played, I didn't take any serious pictures."

Ault's photographic eyes were opened when he attended Eastern Washington University. There he minored in photography and art under the eye of longtime teacher Bob Lloyd. "He was the guy who taught me how to take a picture," Ault said.

A career in photography and graphics gave way to that of being a firefighter. "I put everything away because I had kids and family," Ault said.

After 20 years Ault, 60, picked up the hobby again later in life at a time when he had the money - and interest - to do it right. "I really dove into it head first."

And with the help of having his sons grow up and move out of the family home Ault took over their space and built a first-class darkroom to process and print images shot with his 1950s vintage 4X5 Linhoff view camera.

What might be thought by others to be boring surroundings here in Eastern Washington was instant inspiration for Ault.

"I have always loved Cheney and the Channeled Scablands that surround it and one day in the fall of 2001 I started to look at my world in shades of gray and I knew it was time to take my camera out of mothballs," Ault said in a biographical sketch from the gallery. Black and white's allure is a mystique of its own, he said.

"It has such tonal quality, so many shades, so much feeling," Ault said. "You can tell a story but you can almost tell it in shades of gray."

But finding the right subject matter is just a small part of it for Ault. Getting the shot right is the first crucial step and then what is done in the darkroom is where much of the magic seen in print emerges.

"If they were more than one (F) stop off I considered them worthless," Ault explained. He would spend an entire day in the darkroom to create one photo.

That's a lesson he learned at Eastern from Lloyd whose credo was, "You can't make a good print out of a bad negative, it cannot happen," Ault said.

Ault retired from the Cheney Fire Department in the spring of 2014 and completed a move to Hood Canal. He and his wife Linda finally got to live in a house her parents owned, but only after a half-dozen years doing a complete remodel.

The casualty for Ault in this is his camera is still packed away in the basement. But the upside has been spending recent months dialing into real retirement.

This transition year has been wonderful," Ault said. "I've swam, I've boated, I've gone fishing a bunch - I wasn't even a fisherman before."

As for a return to photography, it will happen he seemed to hint. "There is going to be a point where the camera will eat up my heart," Ault said.

Paul Delaney can be reached pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.