Though the cellphone camera can turn just about everyone into a photographer these days, it’s difficult to argue with the notion that Hawaii inspires more people per capita to take photographs than just about anywhere else in the world.

Just walk along Waikiki at sunset on the 350 or so rainless evenings a year and you’ll see hundreds of people trying for that perfect image of sun, surf and sand and the lifestyle it implies.

But it’s not so easy to create photographs that have "meaningful content and clear vision." That is what photographer Franco Salmoiraghi and book designer Barbara Pope, two artists at the top of their respective fields, sought in choosing photographs for "Contemporary Photography in Hawai‘i 2014," a photo exhibit now on display at the Andrew Rose Gallery downtown.

Sponsored by the Pacific New Media program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Outreach College, the exhibit features 56 images produced by local professionals and amateurs. They were selected from 543 entries from 141 artists statewide for the show, which is in its sixth year.

"Our intent is do a survey, to really take a snapshot of what’s really taking place in contemporary photography in Hawaii on an annual basis," said David Ulrich, program coordinator of Pacific New Media.

Though there are scenes of the beach and the mountains, and even a spectacular sunset, jurors Salmoiraghi and Pope looked for images that — "based on elements of content, context and feeling" — had "ineffable qualities that invite further investigation," according to their jurors’ statement.

"We were almost unanimous in what we deselected in the first two rounds," Salmoiraghi said. "I don’t want to be brutal about it, but there were a lot of cliches. There were a lot of technical things that people tried to do — technical kinds of things without any content to it."

An example is photographs taken with star-tracking devices that allow stars in the night sky to be photographed clearly. "They’re beautiful, but aside from the fact that ‘look what we can do with my new piece of equipment,’ there’s no content," Salmoiraghi said.

What appealed to the judges were arresting ideas, images that struck an emotional nerve.

Attila Pohlmann’s photo of a construction site, taken from above, called "Local Uprising," is "some kind of a statement about all the development that’s going on," he said. "There are a few things in this show that are very timely. They’re things we need to think about in Hawaii."

Another example of that idea is Jill Braden’s "Sea," a photo of an access point to Rocky Point on the North Shore. The classically serene beach scene is disrupted by a sticker-covered sign framed by an archway of tree branches.

"You don’t even see what the sign says," Salmoiraghi said.

Salmoiraghi is now 72, so some images resonated with him as a senior citizen — Lori Kama­moto’s "Onsen de no samui yoru (Cold night at the onsen)," and an untitled photo by Jon Shimizu of his mother cradling a photo of herself as a young girl.

On the opposite end of the aging theme was Monika Catanzaro’s "Transitions: Birth." The dark, slightly blurred photo of an infant being held in water initially appealed to Salmoiraghi because of its "softness" and "darkness."

"It seems like some kind of drama, a christening of some kind, but it turns out it’s an underwater birth," he said. "I have three home births, for all of my sons, so I’m very familiar with this, but I’ve never actually seen one. It’s very subtle and it’s beautifully rendered."

Ulrich said he hopes the show encourages local photographers to look beyond the beauty and seek images that tell the stories of contemporary Hawaii.

"One of the problems with photography is that people tend to over-romanticize the landscape and the culture," he said. "I don’t see a lot of documentary photography in Hawaii. We have many, many things — disappearing neighborhoods, cultural things — that I think need to be documented, and photographers are not picking up the mantle."