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Jane Wingate has carried her camera since the age of 10. She graduated from her grammar school Brownie to a high school Rolleiflex as a student in Watertown, MA. Then she matriculated to her first 35mm at Boston University. Decades later, having graduated to a digital camera in the year 2000, Jane Wingate has tossed her tripod away.

VISIT the JANE WINGATE web site

"When we go on vacation, the camera is stuck to my face," says Wingate, who shoots compulsively. She prefers life through a lens, rather than face-to-face, she says.

For four years in the late 1960s, Wingate taught school in Farmington, then left town. Remarried and following a 16 year stint in Maryland, she returned years ago.

"I just had to be in New Hampshire," she says, 'and, at the time, it was cheap here."

A freelance writer and photographer, Wingate has never been able to put her pen or camera down for long. She has written for the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, mostly first person essays, she says. Currently Wingate is featured regularly in the photography publication Rangefinder. She has written novels and "one almost went somewhere -- you know how that goes." She is currently reviving an original screenplay.

THE WEB SITE MAKERS

Wingate has been an Internet surfer since the Web became available. She says she was the first Farmington resident to go online back in 1995. Sharing her images online seemed the only way to go.

Her web site, JaneWingate.com, appeared in 1998, she says, to promote her photos. There are some sharp images, well worth a look. John Wingate, a mathematician unable to break his wife's life-long addiction to cameras, decided to support her habit and designed the site.

"Where'd you get the idea to use your name for the URL?" I asked in a phone interview this week.

"From you," Wingate says. "You suggested it to me in an email."

"Oh," I say. "Well, it’s still a good idea."

The web site is a refreshingly straightforward gallery of colorful images. No ego on display here. In fact, you can’t find anything about the shy artist stuck behind the lens. The best, I think, are the brightest pictures, where Wingate plays with color, abstraction and architecture – in a series on Nova Scotia and another on Burano, Italy. There are galleries of New Hampshire, Maine, California, all easily accessible with straightforward text navigation.

The arrival of the digital camera and a restless trigger finger led to Wingate's newest project -- a compact disk about Farmington.

"Some people think it's a music CD," she says laughing. "Like I could sing. Then they realize I'm the lady with the camera."

Husband John programmed the landslide of images into CD format and had a large number mass-produced.

Now I don't know beans about Farmington. At least, I didn't until I got a copy of "Our Town Today, Volume 1." After watching my way through 1,500 images of Farmington, I now see the place in my dreams.

Wingate's CD, programmed by hubby John, works as a slide show. It runs on the browser software you use to read email. There are over a dozen topical chapters -- women playing cards, town meetings, flags, kids in church -- and the slides refresh at four second intervals.

Okay, it's not "Gone With the Wind." I got a little punch-drunk watching 100 images of the girls from the Nancy Breton School of Dance performing in the streets at the Farmington Hay Day celebration. Five or six would have made the point. In one segment we not only see grim faces at a lengthy planning board meeting, but actual photos of the notes being kept on a large pad of paper. There are moments when the viewer is reminded of that 9 hour Andy Warhol film of a guy sleeping.

THE UPSHOT

And then come the flashes of brilliance. During one difficult town meeting (in which participants have been known to actually come to blows) the camera moves to a still shot of two framed portraits on the wall -- Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Then there is a shot of the exit sign and an open door, then back to the meeting. This is small town democracy in action, Wingate is saying between the lines. It isn’t always exciting, but we fought a Revolution to get here.

In another segment, Wingate toured Farmington a few days following the September 11 tragedy. She shows only flags, at home after home and flying half staff from businesses across town. People without flags hung out July 4^th bunting. People without bunting glued pictures of flags in their windows. In two shots, garish lettered signs have been quickly adapted to respond to the moment, One reads" GOD BLESS AMERICA. Pool Tournament Wednesday. Karaoke Friday."

The more I look at this CD, the more I believe Wingate is onto something important here. Farmington is the heartland. It is blue-collar America, as far from gentrified Rye and New Castle, it seems, as they are from Ohio.

This is the straight-ahead portrait of the town that gets less attention, but where life bubbles along. Indeed, as the Seacoast population expands and the shoreline erodes, Farmington is where the action almost is.

"Our Town Today, Vol 1" wouldn't work as a photo book, a newspaper, or even a web site. There are just too many images, and yet it is the number of images that drive the human story home. But a CD is practically bottomless. Every computer comes with a CD drive nowadays and the relatively low-tech automated slide-show runs flawlessly even on my seven year old laptop with Netscape 4.5.

While there may never be great demand for Wingate's home-spun documentary outside of Farmington, she has planted the seed of what could be a commercially viable product, and a unique one to boot.

On one level, the CD works as a sociological study. We see Farmington up close and personal. It is a rich archive of people, events and places that can be easily duplicated and widely seen. Because so many locals are depicted, there is a decent opportunity for sales -- especially if future volumes are sold in advance. If enough locals subscribe, advertisers should be willing to pay a few dollars. Unlike newspapers, TV and radio -- this medium has a shelf life of years and years.

And there's more. By clicking on an image, viewers can stop the slide show. When they do, a number appears at the bottom of the screen. For a fee, the photographer will make a high resolution paper print, suitable for framing. Wingate has the option to add sound, endless amounts of text, even video clips to future CDs.

"Right now I'm doing it as a community service," Wingate says of her initial photo archive. "Our first goal is to break even."

But she isn't adverse to making money. Twice a year might be a good publication schedule for her detail rich CD series. Wingate has a dozen new photo essay ideas already percolating, she says. For a woman with a camera forever glued to her face, it seems the ideal job.