An admissions counselor for Ohio State University's Agricultural Technical Institute, Mark Renwick Thompson spends much of his time driving to schools where he talks to high school students and guidance counselors about farm careers.

"You see a lot of interesting countryside," he said of those long drives through rural areas. "I decided to take my camera along and stop if I see something that looks good through the camera lens."

A photograph of one of those scenes earned him some notoriety and led him to a new artistic career.

He entered a photo in a contest held by the Ohio Department of Agriculture. It won first place in the black and white, amateur category.

At the award ceremony, Thompson met the editor of Ohio Farm and Dairy and ended up becoming a regular contributor to the weekly newspaper, which is based in Salem, Ohio, and covers Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Thompson, who opens a photo show this weekend at Grove City College, is a trained artist but has never taken a photography class. He studied one year at Grove City, then transferred to Thiel College, Greenville, because Grove City didn't have an art degree program.

After spending a year at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh as part of the Thiel program, he graduated from Thiel in 1984 with an art degree, emphasizing commercial art.

Thompson won some renown for his photography in high school. "But I never really considered it a vocation. It was one facet of commercial art or art."

His view changed about two years ago when he won the state contest.

"Anything I do is pretty much photography related," said the native of Plum, Allegheny County, who graduated from high school in Cleveland. "It really took off."

The resident of Wooster, Ohio, found that many concerns of photography, particularly design and composition, are the same as for drawing and painting.

"When I look through a camera lens, I literally design a photograph," he said. "It's like a canvas, looking through that camera lens."

Many of his photographs focus on three elements, such as the metal milk jugs in "Ice Milk," the red barn, white silo and blue sky in "Red, White and Blue" and the sun and clouds reflecting off a window in "Three Panes."

"Basic design says you should have three points," he explained. "A stool doesn't stand without three legs. Unless you have a design foundation, color's not going to matter."

Although many people will probably recognize a snow-covered Wolf Creek and Rainbow Bridge in Grove City in his photo "The White Wolf," Thompson doesn't like to tell people where his shots were taken.

"I want it to be familiar, yet unique," he said. "I don't want to corner it."

In his vista shots, "I'm always looking for that view where people go, 'Wow, I've never seen it from that perspective before.'"

In "Doorway," he found an unusually angled gate. A Mail Pouch barn looks ghostly in "Fading Delivery." A horse seems to blend into the autumn orange of a tree in "Ghost Horse."

Close-ups are meant to show texture, such as the grain of wood in "Three Pitch Forks," the sharpness of barbed wire in "Ring of Wire" and the flakes of rust in "Hammer, Skillet and Saw."

Each shot should have some drama, with the potential for action even though nothing is moving, he said.

"I want someone to look at a picture and ask, 'What did that look like 50 years ago? Will it be there in three years?' I want to tell a story. I want people to ponder, contemplate."

Thompson will appear at a reception for the show at 9 to 11 a.m. today in the gallery of Pew Fine Arts Center. More of his photos can be seen on-line at http://sites.netscape.net/renwick photo