Tim Johnson was just a man with a day job and a dog when he decided to take some pictures while walking with his pet on the Vineyard’s scenic trails and beaches.

Those walks were the start of a second career for Mr. Johnson, a lifelong Vineyard Haven resident who has worked at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport for 40 years.

“I started bringing my camera more and more,” Mr. Johnson said during a Gazette interview at Mocha Mott’s in Oak Bluffs, where an exhibition of his photographs is on display through the end of July.

“Once you acquire a taste for [photography], you start acquiring lenses and … trying new techniques,” he said.

The self-taught photographer now reports four days a week to Cape Air, where he guides planes and assists with passengers and luggage, and spends the other three days taking photos for his weekly Island Light slideshow on the Vineyard Gazette website and for his Instagram account, @timmjaws.

“I take time each day to go out on a little safari hunt. I don’t know if I’m going to turn left up-Island or right down-Island,” said Mr. Johnson, who came to the Gazette on his own nearly a decade ago.

“I just blindly walked in and guess who I met? [Editor] Julie Wells,” he said.

Tim Johnson holding a photo of an osprey with its catch. — Jeanna Shepard

Initially approving Mr. Johnson as a freelance photographer, Ms. Wells soon saw his potential as a weekly photo columnist and created Island Light for him in 2013. He hasn’t missed a week since, submitting at least 10 photos every time.

He’d be taking pictures anyway, Mr. Johnson said, but the Gazette’s commitment provides him with a greater sense of purpose.

“That somebody has a use for it is special to me,” he said.

Mr. Johnson’s show at Mocha Mott’s highlights the eye for quintessential Island moments that has made Island Light a beloved Sunday feature at vineyardgazette.com.

Images in the coffeehouse exhibition include an osprey snagging a trout (from a pond where the fish had just been stocked for human anglers, Mr. Johnson said), a flock of shorebirds rising from a wave-splashed beach boulder up-Island and a white-muzzled black Labrador in a wooden dinghy, waiting in dignified patience for its humans to wade out and join it.

“It’s a lot of luck,” he said. “I feel like the less I worry about the conditions and just let the camera see what’s there, the more luck I have.”

A night shot from a Martha’s Vineyard Sharks baseball game combines the action thrill of a home run with the atmospheric elements of light and fog.

“I enjoy lights,” said Mr. Johnson, who used red and blue lights on stands to create a colorful self-portrait at the airport.

Mr. Johnson said he is also attracted to textures, and gestured to a shot of two woolly sheep grazing at the Farm Institute in Edgartown.

“I love rust. I love wool [and] brick,” he added.

While Mr. Johnson’s work is represented at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, which owns four photographs, as well as at the Cape Air offices, on the airline website and in calendars for Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, he said he does not market his photography and is not trying to sell the images displayed at Mocha Mott’s.

But that may have to change, Mr. Johnson added.

“More and more people are asking,” he said.