Janet Woodcock, of Tisbury, is one of the Vineyard’s premier black and white photographers. While there are many who have embraced the medium, she is one of the last who still uses film, still goes into the darkroom and under a dull amber light prints her silver gelatin prints.

Next week, she and another Island artist, Deborah T. Colter of Edgartown, will have their work shown in an exhibit in New York city called The Artist Project New York. The exhibit runs from March 17 to 20, at Pier 92, 55th street, at the West Side Highway. The Artist Project New York is an exhibition of fine art by an international selection of unrepresented artists. Ms. Woodcock and Ms. Colter were chosen for their fine work. Ms. Colter works in mixed media.

Ms. Woodcock has always wandered about with a camera. She has childhood memories of taking pictures with a Kodak Brownie. “Remember those days when you sent your film away and it came back in a little album? That was the era of Life Magazine,” she said.

Years later her love for picture taking pointed her to the Art Institute of Boston. “I was 30 years old and I asked myself, ‘What am I going to do with the rest of my life?’

“When somebody asked me what I was going to do, I said I wanted to be like Margaret Bourke-White. That is why I went to school and never turned back.” From there she went to the New England School of Photography and graduated in 1982.

Her first discovery of the Vineyard came on the edge of a whim. Her partner, Carol Collins, came up with the idea of visiting the Vineyard for a break.

“When I graduated from photography school, I was broke and tired. You put everything aside when you are in a program like that. It was in early spring. Carol and I came down here for her birthday, actually. “I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday. She said, ‘I want to go to Martha’s Vineyard.’ I said, ‘Okay.’

“We threw our bags, our camping gear in the Volkswagen Beetle,” she said. They stayed at the Webb’s Campground for four days. “We loved it. We had a blast.

“When we were leaving, the owners asked me if I wanted to come back and work for the summer. I said, this is great. It is fresh air, camping, I can figure out what I am going to do.” “I met Cooper Gilkes and we were bonito fishing. He got me hooked up with the derby. My first job was working for the derby taking pictures of people bringing in their fish,” she said.

When she finished with a day and evening of shooting, she would come back to Webb’s Campground and use one of their bathrooms as a darkroom, because that was the only time the room was dark. “I would develop the pictures at night and I would go back to the derby during the day. I sold them $5 apiece. It was a hoot.”

After the derby, there was no heat in the house where they were staying; the two left to go back to Boston. Growth in her career as an artistic photographer began with newspapering. She worked for the Beacon Enterprise, which owned a group of weeklies in western Boston. “I took pictures. It was all features and no news. The editor would say to me, ‘Go out and find something interesting we can put in the paper.’ It wasn’t much money but it was worth it. You learn how to take a picture anytime, any place, and make it good because that was your job.”

Later she was a photographer for the Attleboro Sun Chronicle, a daily. “I never made it as staff, I was a stringer, but I worked all the time,” she said. Newspapering had its limits. “I was too slow.” With photojournalism, she said, “you’ve got to go in and figure out what it is, get the picture and get out really fast. I would like to hang out. And you didn’t make much money.”

She did enjoy doing work for nonprofit organizations. She remembers working for Boston Aging Concerns. “It was a group trying to work with issues of elderly and housing. They basically needed documentary photographs.

“They couldn’t afford to pay a lot of money, but they paid me enough,” she said.

While her work was mostly done in 35 mm film, she developed a greater respect and fondness for medium format photography. It involves a larger negative and there is a lot more information in the picture. She took workshops with other photographers she liked: Eugene Richards, Nan Goldin and Larry Fink.

She got a Hasselblad camera when she started teaching at the New England School of Photography about 20 years ago. She taught a fundamental photography class called Small Format Photography which referred to all roll film photography.

The Vineyard remained an important part of their lives though. “We spent a lot of time trying to get to the Vineyard,” she said. Fifteen years ago, the two decided to buy a home on the Vineyard. “We came down here and the houses were for sale, and they were cheap.”

Ms. Woodcock said she organized her week so she could teach two days in Boston and live here. In that first year, she severely broke her ankle and her mobility was restricted. She ended up taking photographs and making small prints. She remembers one summer setting up and selling photographs at the Chilmark Flea Market. She sold all her photographs.

For Ms. Woodcock photography is art. And through the years she has undertaken a number of personal projects. “I like to work on a series,” she said. She did a barnyard series of portraits of farm animals. The photograph collection is principally of Vineyard animals.

She started exhibiting in Andrea Rogers’s Artisans Festivals and that brought greater success. “I kept teaching for several years,” she said. But a few years ago, her success at selling her black and white photographs infringed on her teaching in Boston. “Once I got started with Andrea’s artisans shows, I got on a roll. I would go out and take more pictures and eventually got to a point where I had to quit teaching because it was getting in the way. It was draining to do the commute to Boston.”

The emphasis shifted to selling her work nationally. “I usually do eight to ten shows a year off-Island,” she said.

She also developed a close friendship with Deborah Colter. The two would often exhibit in the same places. “Deb is a consummate artist and we are always sharing information with each other about shows,” Ms. Woodcock said.

She never got very far with digital photography, though she learned early that it would dominate the medium. In the late 1980s, she attended a photojournalism association workshop. “I was at my first press photographer meeting in Boston and I sat near an old timer. He must have been one of those photographers that went back to the day of the Speed Graphic.

“Kodak or some other firm was offering a program on the new digital age. The old timer looked at me. He said, ‘In 10 years, this is all that there will be, mark my words.’”

Looking back, Ms. Woodcock said: “I tell you it was faster than 10 years. I have never seen anything change so quickly in my life.”

Ms. Woodcock said she took classes in digital photography but was disappointed. “I hated it. I didn’t like sitting in front of a computer. It hurt my back. It hurt my eyes. I asked, why am I doing this? I want to be out there. I want to be in my darkroom with my radio on. You can walk around a tray.”

Ms. Woodcock sees a swing in the pendulum. There are more and more photographers looking at film photography again as the medium of an artist. Schools are again teaching darkroom work. Every print coming out of the darkroom is hand printed and thus unique.

For her, “It is the only thing I know.”