Photographer took portraits of anyone who visited his SLO County studio. Who are they?

“If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I’d like to do is to save every day till eternity passes away.” — “ Time in a Bottle ,” Jim Croce , 1972

What fun it is to have access to slice-of-life photo collections from your hometown’s past.

In this case, that’s thanks to a skilled, former Cambria photographer who’s a bit of a picture pack rat. But more on that later.

Do you still have a photo collection — aka an affectionate rogues gallery of family and friends — in frames on a wall in your home?

Those pictures are our nostalgic “time in a bottle,” giving us a glimpse back at the past every time we walk by.

It’s a tradition that’s threatened with extinction by the smartphone, which would be a shame.

A glossy 8-by-10 in a nice frame has a lot more emotional clout for me than squinting at a 2-by-4-inch selfie on a phone screen.

I’ve been known to stand by our photo gallery for several minutes at a time, awash in memories.

Perhaps the snapshot portrait of my late husband Richard cradling tiny granddaughter Madison drew my attention. Or one from the last time I was with three East Coast family members, two of whom have died since then. Or my two tall, grinning sons standing with their elbows on the top of my head (yeah, I’m short).

I also suspect that we’re not printing out favored photos very often anymore.

Pity.

We can so easily share those hard-copy pictures and talk about the memories with each other, with guests and even with the local delivery guy, if he’s curious enough to come in and look.

We don’t have to spend a lot of time scrolling through the zillion albums and images on our phone to find the one we want. It’s right there on the wall.

But wait, who is that?

Those quick strolls past our picture walls can also have challenges: Identifying everybody in the photos.

Family’s often easy (unless you’re related to half the town or the county, like some people I know).

Acquaintances, business associates and folks who casually honk or say “howdy” at the pharmacy? Not so much. They can look recognizable, but where, oh where, in our gray matter did we file their names?

Take a look back at some Cambrians from a couple of decades ago

On a grander scale, former professional Cambria photographer Joseph Dominguez has a collection of 170 portraits he took of North Coast notables, everyday folks and even the town’s UPS and FedEx delivery chaps.

Some of those pictures ran in the Take Five weekly feature of The Tribune’s sister paper, The Cambrian , which is itself online these days.

As a public service (and maybe to sell a print or two), Dominguez has published “The Cambria Portraits” collection on a special website.

Some are readily recognizable, such as the late Jim Buckley, a Cambria theater owner, actor, director and character.

Others are firmly planted in that fuzzy gray-matter category.

Now the photog would like help identifying some of the people on the website.

He has names below most of the portraits, and I could provide IDs for a few more of the unlabeled ones than I thought I’d be able to identify (Dale Bunting, for instance).

Others I don’t know at all. But a lot of them seem so potentially recognizable, if only I could ask Google to search for them.

The collection documents “visitors to my studio … (from) roughly 2009 to 2011,” Dominguez wrote at the top of the website collection. “Some were invited, some dropped by. I tried to get everyone I could to stand in front of the camera.

“There are so many more people I wish I had photographed, but I’m so fortunate to have snagged these,” Dominguez said. “I am proud and humbled by this body of work. Thank you to the people of Cambria for making this project happen. I am forever in your debt.”

The difference between cellphone collections and Dominguez’s work, he said, is that unlike the deliberateness of most pics snapped on an iPhone (selfie with your burger, for instance), “I’m catching people off guard at times. That’s the beauty, the human nature, the wonderfulness of interaction with them. Catching someone’s smile when they’re not really trying.”

To see the portraits or order some of them, go to the website at www.dominguezstudio.com/photo-projects/the-cambria-portraits or contact Dominguez at www.dominguezstudio.com/about-1.

Who is Joe Dominguez?

Dominguez attended the Cal Poly art and design program starting in 2002, living in a small trailer on the Camp Ocean Pines property in Cambria.

After he graduated in 2004, “I started shooting local marketing images and portraits, eventually making photos for the Central Coast wine industry, among other regional clients,” he told The Tribune in a July 17 email.

To further his career, he moved to San Francisco in 2014, eventually creating images for Apple and other clients in Silicon Valley and the surrounding area.

Many of those photos are shown on his commercial Joseph Dominguez website .

During the pandemic, he and wife Kyla relocated to the Salt Lake City area of Utah, drawn by the “beauty of the mountain states … the fresh air we needed.”

He now works remotely from there, still creating for Apple.

Dominguez also has a fine-art collection of work online with Central Coast images. It’s at dominguezfineart.com .

“I’m always adding to it, and it’s fun to bring back moments through my life in this way, he said. “It’s an archival collection of images illustrating how I’ve seen the world around me.”

In other words, his websites are his California rogues’ gallery and family album, and lucky us: We get to share them.

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