Andrew Warren's favorite modes of transportation are bike and skateboard. He likes to roll, and both of these ways of moving call for balance and engagement. Warren is a photography professor at the University of New Hampshire and part of a trio of photographers whose exhibition, "Wheels," just opened at the Jill Coldren Wilson Gallery of the Kimball-Jenkins School of Art in Concord. Their images testify to their attraction and fascination with movement and stasis.

"We're all three engaged in the world of wheels," Warren says. "We're bicyclists and skateboarders, and Ken has a fascination with motorcycles. Through these experiences we became interested in the way modes of transportation can be part of the way an individual expresses their personality."

Jasen Strickler, Ken Richardson and Andrew Warren met in Boston teaching at area schools: Wellesley, Art Institute of Boston and Boston Public. They enjoyed each other's aesthetics and subject matter and decided to form a working group.

"We liked what we were doing artistically but were just not seeing that kind of stuff out there," Warren says. They met regularly to critique each other's work and to jury informally what was strongest. Out of that grew the three-person show. Darryl Furtkamp, the director of the Kimball-Jenkins School of Art, was one of the first curators interested in offering them a forum for "Wheels."

The show is a sort of cross between documentary and portraiture. "We all bring something different to the genre. We use different formats and films. Jasen uses a Polaroid process that renders a test print positive and a high quality negative that he can take home and play with to make more prints. Jasen is a portraitist. He has direct interaction and forms relationships with his subjects," Warren explains. Using the Polaroid, Strickler can offer his photographic subject the test print as a place to begin building a relationship. Warren describes Ken Richardson as "a direct portraitist" interested primarily in human subjects, yet his hobby-"playing with quirky motorcycles"-brings him into contact with street elements that he can shoot casually, "off the cuff or like snapshots."

As for Warren's style, many of his photos are taken in flight: biking, skateboarding or driving. Of the three, he's the one working in both black and white and color with a variety of cameras: 35 mm, 120 mm and other medium-sized formats. His photos involve happy accidents and interesting juxtapositions, and he's able to capitalize on this in his darkroom work. His style is candid, and usually he doesn't know any of the subjects he chooses to photograph.

Warren and Richardson also skate and ride together, photographing each other. Some of those photos made it into the "Wheels" exhibition. In Warren's "Ken, Fitchburg, MA" the shadow of a boarder moves across the skate park concrete; there's a hand in the upper right corner of the frame, a happy accident, the shadow maker on the verge of his own disappearance. At first the hand looks disembodied. Then, your eyes make the connections, you see the relationship develop between light and shadow, and then the hand almost looks as if it's holding a conductor's baton, willing the photographic elements into place. Warren relishes it when this sort of thing transpires. In Warren's "Parade," we see a giant fire hydrant pulled behind a fire truck. One imagines a giant Dalmatian not far behind, just out of the viewfinder's reach.

With an eye tuned to colors and angles, some of Warren's more architectural work is breathtaking. He has an eye for accidental symmetry. These photos without people strike me as the most provocative, creating a landscape the viewer can enter unmediated by another human presence. Since they are set in New York City and greater Boston, you feel the loneliness of unpeopled landscapes in very peopled places. In "Roslindale, MA" we're treated to NECCO-wafer-colored houses. "Two Trucks, NYC" is a curbside gander at long white trailers, filled and waiting for their sources of locomotion. They blend with the gorgeous reds, grays and blacks of the building behind them and lose their purpose, become visual elements, blocky and foregrounded. They morph back and forth: truck then ephemera, ephemera then truck.

Thanks to Ken Richardson, we have in evidence great shots of vintage and custom-built bikes and their owners, riders and wrenchers. Many are taken in Gilford, N.H., at some of the infamous Bike Week's ancillary activities. Then there's "Ice Racers, Sturbridge, MA," where the danger of the errant June bug is replaced by the real possibility of frostbite. In "Leah, Framingham, MA" a young woman poses demurely by her recently gassed up Moto Guzzi, while in "Just Married, Rockport, ME" it appears the same bike (am I reading the plate right?) is dressed with saddle bags, backpack and sporting the familiar "just married" moniker in masking tape. An anonymous rider at its side in jeans, black biker boots and spaghetti straps... I'll bet that's Leah!

Jasen Strickler's photo "Leah's Go-Cart" chronicles great joie de vivre. Leah races down a side street, with a smile full of wicked mischief, sporting some sort of rocking aviator/welder's goggles that give her an additional crazed enthusiasm. There's a definite harmony between woman and machine captured here that exemplifies what they're trying to do in the "Wheels" show.

Richardson's vintage Moto Guzzi graces the gallery, lending the smell of grease and well-worn rubber to the ambiance, an aromatic touch, a little biker's aromatherapy when it's 10 degrees and you long for a spring putt on a windy, winding road.

Strickler, Richardson and Warren hope to take this show on the road. I hope their wheels and eyes keep true.

"Wheels: Photographs by Ken Richardson, Jasen Strickler and Andrew M.K. Warren" will be exhibited through March 24 at the Kimball-Jenkins School of Art, 266 North Main St. Concord, 603-225-3932, www.kimballjenkins.com.