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On Friday, Catriona Fraser will award the winners of the 9th Annual International Photography Competition at her namesake gallery in Bethesda. While cash prizes and pride are on the line, more importantly, the public gets to check out the work of talented shooters from California to New Jersey. The variety of styles includes landscape, abstract and street photography.

With a few exceptions, portraits are noticeably absent from the collection. It's not that Fraser doesn't enjoy pictures of people — Jillian Pichocki's shot of a boxer won best in show in 2008 — there just weren't many strong entries. That's the gallery owner's method of operation: choosing the strongest photos regardless of subject or style.

"I just pick what I like," she says. "I don't even think about the themes that I'm going for until I get all the work in here. I hang it so that it works well together, and then you can see some themes."

This year's entries totaled 151, up from last year's 111. Although the competition is "international," no foreign shots made the cut down to 36 finalists. The submissions that will hang in the gallery during the next month represent 15 states.

Fraser believes pictures must be more than technically perfect. She favors striking composition and subject matter. One rejected trend was urban decay — rotting furniture, crumbling buildings and warped wooden floors.

"I am not on the urban decay train like a lot of museums are," says Fraser. "It's been going on for about 10 years, and I can't stand it."

Of course, that doesn't mean every entry must show off some stunning state park vista. There is beauty in the abstract; just ask Michael Wilson. The Motorola IT manager from Hainesville, Ill., just north of Chicago, scours the Windy City and its suburbs for damaged walls and machinery. But he's more interested in unique patterns than decay. This appreciation for minutia stems from his days at the University of Oregon, where he studied with late abstract master Brett Weston.

"It doesn't matter whether it's peeling paint or fading paint patterns on a concrete wall at an old World War II battery. I'm looking for design more than specific subject matter," he says. "Quite honestly, I'm not interested in doing portraits, never have been."

He shot "Exploding Rust Spot" in a wrecking yard. The photo depicts a colorful blast of weathering he found on a Caterpillar bulldozer.

"Design-wise, color-wise, the image just jumped out at me," Wilson says. "It's a personal taste thing."

At first, Wilson's work seems similar to that of finalist Anita Licis-Ribak of Amherst, Mass. Both artists require the viewer to stare at each photo for a few seconds to decipher the subject. That's where the likenesses end. If Wilson seeks destruction, Licis-Ribak searches for perfection. Her two photos are clean, almost heavenly. She doesn't do much to the digital file. In fact, she snapped the ethereal "Untitled No. 1" with a Canon PowerShot G6, a point-and-shoot camera anyone can purchase at Best Buy or Target.

"I love [Frank Gehry's] process and how he works in a very artistic manner," Licis-Ribak explains. "When you look at the building, there are all of these forms and shapes combining into a whole, complex composition."

Born in Latvia and trained as an architectural and interior designer at the University of Massachusetts, Licis-Ribak began taking photographs after moving to the Russian tundra as a child. To this point, photography has been little more than a hobby. However, a recent string of successful contest submissions has convinced the artist to reevaluate her priorities.

"I am very invested in photography right now and exploring where that takes me," she says. "Even if I was being rejected by all the places I submit to, I would still keep shooting."

Local photographers familiar with Fraser Gallery make up the largest faction of entrants, and Silver Spring's Allen Russ provided a pair of outstanding finalists. At her computer, Fraser clicks through Russ' submissions. When she gets to his "Grass and Pond, Isle of Skye, Scotland," she says that it appears Russ manipulated the image in some way. The cloud formations near the top look like they were produced by a Hollywood effects technician. He may have tweaked it a little, but Russ claims that he doesn't do anything that cannot be achieved in a traditional darkroom.

"It's all composition," he explains. "I try to apply those old school techniques. The tool just happens to be Photoshop and not a darkroom enlarger anymore."

An architectural photographer by trade, Russ earned a bachelor's in fine art in photography from the University of Arizona. The Washington area provides limited landscapes, so Russ steals away photographic adventures whenever he gets a chance. His two photos of Scottish waterways were taken after he attended a wedding five years ago.

"When I go to photograph a place, it actually takes me about two days to get warmed up," Russ says. "My wife came back home [after the wedding] and I stayed for an additional week. I spent that week just driving around, looking for places and taking little hikes."

Russ is a traditionalist in terms of process, too. He took up digital photography just a few years ago and favors long exposures of up to 30 minutes. "Grass and Pond" took about five.

"That's one of those shots that's a combination of technique and time. The weather in Scotland and cloud formations will change in 15 or 20 minutes. What you're looking at is a five-minute exposure. And in those five minutes, these clouds entered the frame and spread out like that," he notes.

Shaun van Steyn, an Englishman who has lived in Falls Church since the early 1980s. He likes to tell the story behind shooting "Midnight Cirrus." The flower blooms only once a year at night.

"I had a flashlight, and I had a friend hold it from behind," he recalls. "I was on the other side of the flower. If you look at the image, you'll see that there's no light going directly into the camera. To my surprise, it really worked."

Fraser chose "Midnight Cirrus" for its originality. In a market saturated with close-ups of garden life, van Steyn's shot is refreshing. The flower looks like an anatomical model from a lost David Lynch film. It represents a crossroads of the two vocations that pay his mortgage — fine art and stock photography. Somehow, he managed to capture a striking shot of a greeting card subject.

"If you don't give a go in life at things, you won't get anywhere," says van Steyn. "You have to keep on trying."

Winners of the 9th Annual International Photography Competition will be announced Friday at a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at Fraser Gallery, 7700 Wisconsin Ave., Suite E, Bethesda. The exhibition runs through April 3. Gallery hours are 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Call 301-718-9651 or visit thefrasergallery.com.