According to Seattle-born photographer Mary Randlett, capturing the perfect picture is all about luck.

“There’s a lot of photographers who don’t say that, but it’s luck,” she declared.

Randlett’s landscape photography is on display at the Tacoma Art Museum in an exhibit titled “Veiled Northwest.”

The photographs on display are black-and-white nature images Randlett has taken throughout her life, from the late 1960s through 2006. The images are of mountains, rivers, trees and beaches, but she takes advantage of light to make each image unique and stunning.

Most of Randlett’s photos are shrouded in some way, as the title of the exhibit suggests. Her pictures of mountains are hidden in clouds, and lakes and rivers are covered in mist. Several of the photographs experiment with shadows and reflections to convey forms.

“I’ve always loved mountains,” Randlett commented, but added that mountains on a clear, sunny day get boring quickly. “Cloudy, bright light is what I like the most.”

The exhibit also features several photos of nearly clear-cut forests, where only a few trees remain.

“You’ve got to respect your subject,” Randlett said. “Clear-cuts can be ugly, but I can see beautiful forms and texture.”

Randlett said what makes the Northwest so unique to photograph is its light. In black-and-white photography, one can capture every tone from black to white, she said. The contrast between light and darkness, and the true Northwest tones in her photographs, is what is most stunning about Randlett’s artwork.

The exhibit coincides with the release of a book of Randlett’s photos, several of which will be accompanied by poetry by writer Denise Levertov. Levertov, who was born in 1923 in England and moved to Seattle in 1989, chose certain photos to translate into poetry for the book. Randlett met the poet in 1989 when Levertov was teaching at the University of Washington.

Several of those poems are on display alongside Randlett’s photography in the gallery.

Randlett was born in 1924. She has been taking photographs since she was 10. At Whitman College in Walla Walla, she taught herself how to develop film and print pictures. Her photography career began in 1949 when her photograph of a hydroplane was published in several magazines.

Over the next five decades, Randlett documented people and places throughout the Northwest. She lives in Olympia. She has two sons, two daughters and one granddaughter.

Randlett’s book will be released Oct. 20.