When one photographer featured at this week's Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts picks up his camera, he sees a world without color while another featured finds a community without electricity within his lens.

Photographer of the Amish community Randall Persing and black and white fine art photographer Paul Shatz will both feature their work at this years Arts Fest.

Persing has photographed the Amish for about 20 years, and his art has sold all over the world.

He works with the old order sector of the Amish Community. They are the most "rustic" of all, forgoing electricity and batteries, he said. Persing said their life is different from ours: They have more of a community setting, and seem to rely more on one another.

"They don't decorate. They don't have a painting or any kind of decoration. They only have things like a coat rack and a place to hang your hat," Persing said. "It's a very simplistic way of life."

Gaining access into the Amish community is no easy feat; Persing stumbled upon his career in Amish photography, he said.

While riding his mountain bike one day near his home, he encountered some people from the Amish community and began a friendship with them. Soon after, he began helping where he could with their community needs in exchange for the opportunity to take photos of their way of life, he said.

Many festival-goers are very receptive to his work.

"People will come into the booth and just stop and stand there. They get caught up in the emotion of the simple life," Persing said.

Another photographer at Arts Fest, Shatz, who trained with well-known landscape photographer Clyde Butcher, shoots natural landscapes and is primarily drawn to trees, beaches and swamps, he said.

Shatz takes photographs solely in black and white.

"The reason I do that is because I want people to understand how the natural world feels as opposed to how it looks. Looking at a beautiful scene, you look at the beautiful textures and shapes, and sometimes color can distract you from what you're feeling," Shatz said.

Shatz photographs landscapes because he wants draw attention to another important aspect of his photography: environmentalism, he said.

"Educating people about conservation was important to me, and the best way to do it was with my artwork rather than preach to people about what they should or shouldn't do," Shatz said.

He said he doesn't really think of himself as an artist, but more as an educator. Through his photographs, he tries to inspire developers to incorporate the environment into their projects, he added.

Shatz does about 35-40 art festivals per year, and his work ranges from $200 to $3,000 depending on its size, he said.