Asked to articulate his primary artistic aspiration, Bainbridge Island photographer Andrew “Andy” Bergh said his pictures are all about inspiring a feeling in the viewer.

And maybe even some pragmatic pondering.

“If people can look at a given image, if they’ve been there, maybe it makes them long to go back, or they look at it and it starts making them think about their next trip,” he said. “Or, they see one of my local images [and] if they look at that it makes them appreciate the beautiful spot where we live. There’s different ways to evoke feelings or memories.”

The longtime lawyer has in recent years shifted his focus (pun intended) so as to devote more of his time to photography. He specializes in fine art and travel imagery, and is now in the process of opening his own gallery in Winslow, where images from England, Scotland and locales even further afield will hang near scenes from his own Bainbridge back yard.

He started off with less exotic subjects.

“I had two kids and they were extremely photogenic,” Bergh recalled. “We quickly became known for our Christmas cards. People would look forward to seeing our kids. I think I took great shots, but it’s also nice to have two very photogenic kids. That’s how I’d say things kind of began.”

Bergh has more than three decades of law experience behind him. He began as a prosecutor in Orange County, California, where, “I tried more cases in five and a half years than most lawyers try in a lifetime.”

After switching to private practice, Bergh was an insurance lawyer for 10 years, representing insurance companies in bad-faith lawsuits or defending clients in a variety of tort cases, before again changing gears. Since 1993, he’s been representing clients with significant injury claims.

Through it all, however, he made time to make pictures — and not just of his kids.

Well, mostly he made time.

“After I left the prosecutor’s office, my hours really became a lot longer because I was focusing on my career,” Bergh said. “I was still doing that when I moved up here in 1988.”

These days, however, he’s better balanced.

“I used to play golf and my photography was dormant,” Bergh laughed. “Now, it’s the opposite. My golf game’s completely dormant but I’m focusing on the photography.”

Bergh’s gallery — at 284 Madrona Way NE, Suite 124, about one block east of the Bainbridge Pavilion — will be open by early January. He was a featured new addition to the recent wintertime Bainbridge Island Studio Tour, too, one of just a few photographers on the roster.

The artist said he has brought the same dedication and attention to detail which brought him success in the world of law to his art and gallery.

“There are some similarities, but I’d say there’s more differences,” Bergh said.

“If you’re given a set of facts and you have a client, you need to be solution-oriented. You’ve got to figure out what steps do you need to take to get the best possible result for your client. Well, in a photograph, on a much smaller scale … it’s like, ‘OK. I’ve got this image in my mind. How do I execute this? What’s the solution for making this image that I want to make?’ I like that aspect of it.”

It’s freeing, Bergh said, to sometimes be your own target audience.

“With law there’s so much chess playing that goes on,” Bergh said. “I do mostly litigation, so I have to deal with the games being played by the other side. And, with photography it’s just me, myself and I.”

Bergh said he found photography to be rewarding in other ways as well, including giving him a greater sense of awareness as he goes about his daily life.

“It makes you look at the world in a completely different way,” he said. “Everyone has such a fast pace in their lives and sometimes they don’t always stop and smell the coffee, as the expression goes. But now, whenever I’m out and about, I’m looking around me.

“I like the way photography opens up your eyes to other things out and around and about you that you otherwise wouldn’t pay attention to.”

Bergh is obsessed with every step in the image-making process, from conception to printing. He shoots with the idea that his audience will ideally live with an image for a very long time, and he tailors his postproduction and printing decisions to facilitate that kind of relationship.

“That’s pretty much the goal of my photography,” he said. “I’m a stickler for crazy detail. I want to have an image where people will see something new every time they look at it.

“The question I really like is, ‘Is that a painting or a photograph?’” he added. “Because I want my own look. I don’t want to sell large picture postcards. That’s not what I want to do since I’m really into the printing. I do all of my own printing, unless it’s a metal print or a canvass print.”

The story behind each image is another aspect of the work Bergh said he looks forward to sharing with visitors to his gallery — which is also a working studio and office, with in-progress work coming off printers and clearly visible on computer screens. There’s no mystery to it, Bergh said.

He wants people to ask.

“I find that people do have questions,” he said. “I’m very enthusiastic, not just about photography but about all the subjects I’ve photographed.

“For me, taking the photo is just part of the journey; it’s only the first step of the journey. You’ve then got the post-processing, but ultimately it comes down to the print.”

To learn more, visit www.berghimages.com, email andy@berghimages.com or call 206-621-0101.

A unique view of Seattle Andy Bergh photo