Community members look directly at the camera - and the viewer.

Photographer Tom O’Neal knows what makes a good portrait. He shot the historic Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 at age 23 and has captured images of famous musicians like Joni Mitchell, Jim Croce and Jimi Hendrix, and completed album covers for artists including John Denver, Steppenwolf and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

“The very first thing you have to do is a build trust with your subject,” says O’Neal, who lives in Carmel Valley and still works as a photographer, shooting commercial work and portraits. “Then you have a line of connectivity where it becomes your moment with them.”

That trust is key for documenting their personality, he adds.

“For a certain amount of time, you have all the power, because that person is right there in your command,” O’Neal says. “You can’t get anything in a true portrait unless you build that connection. Once you have that, interesting things start to happen.”

Michelle Magdalena Maddox, a fine art and commercial photographer based in Pacific Grove, agrees. Maddox shoots in both color and black-and-white film for many projects, including numerous portraits. 

“A good portrait shows an authentic expression, but it’s a challenge to bring that out of someone,” Maddox says. “For me, that is something unique between the composition and their expression.”

A photojournalist’s role is different in that photos are rarely staged or set up. They are designed to capture a newsworthy moment, and often reveal people when they’re not at their best, when they may be reacting to tragedy or waiting for a verdict. A portrait is shot in a controlled, studio setup and lit externally to work with a person and show off their character. The story is the person, not a set of circumstances around them. 

When shooting a portrait, I focus on the subject’s eyes. You can uncover a lot of their emotional depth and, through that, how they see the world. 

This collection of portraits is a celebration of locals. Many of them have been in the Weekly before. Some are well-known throughout Monterey County, while others contribute to the community in less high-profile ways. 

The goal was to photograph each person in a way that humanizes them and reduces the context that we’ve built up around them. These are individuals who are inspiring, intriguing or just plain fun to have around - and at the end of the day, they are simply people.

~ ~ ~

The Skater | Alex White

Inside her “soccer mom van” used for hauling her 2-year-old and 5-year-old around, Alex White keeps skateboard tools in a container next to the child carrier. The 32-year-old Realtor started skating in 1996. She went pro in 2001 and in 2004, she was invited to skate in the X Games, but didn’t compete due to an injury. They offered her a job instead, working for a division in charge of running the contest for Live TV.

“I have to change out of my professional work clothes into my sneakers and ripped jeans before I start skateboarding,” she says. “People assume I’m there dropping off little Billy with my minivan but actually it’s mom’s turn to get rad and shred the gnar.”

White is now a member of the advisory board to the Women’s Skateboarding Alliance, which helped bring the X Games management and female athletes across all sports to agree to equal pay at X Games events. Now that the Olympics has announced the inclusion of skateboarding in the 2020 Olympics, the WSA will be there to be the official governing body for the female skaters.

The Music Collector | Bob Gamber

Bob Gamber’s age of 59 may help him fit into quaint, sleepy Pacific Grove stereotypes, but his storefront and vibe definitely don’t. Three years ago, Gamber moved his record store, Vinyl Revolution, from Monterey to P.G. Its bright purple Dutch door and loud doom metal escaping through the top stand out amid the Victorian homes. Gamber came to the area in 1978 working in various record stores and other odd jobs. In the ’80s he lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and was a roadie for Metallica and other bands like Death Angel. He opened Vinyl Revolution in 1994.

“Everyone thinks I’m this metal guy, because I hung out with the metalheads,” Gamber says, “but I’m more of a psychedelic guy.” He’s also a drummer, currently playing in a ’60s-inspired garage rock trio called The Tomb Weavers.

The Lawman | District Attorney Dean Flippo

Dean Flippo is Monterey County’s longest-serving district attorney. He began as a prosecutor in 1972 and became chief public prosecutor in 1990. He’s overseen countless murder cases, including five that ended with a person sentenced to death row.

“I believe in redemption,” he says, “but there are evil people out there and I believe in accountability. In my view, they are making conscious choices. The law tries to distinguish between those who made conscious decisions to kill, from someone suffering from mental instability.”

Flippo says one struggle is the lack of public understanding of the complexity of the justice system. “It’s amazing what we deal with [as far as] the perception of expectation in law enforcement,” he says.

The Poet | Garland Thompson, Jr.

Garland Thompson, Jr. uses poetry as an escape. The former Pacific Grove poet-in-residence explains how writing is necessary: “It will always matter to me, because it’s a way to speak, explore the truth, dreams, reality and life. Writing cuts through all the noise and bullshit we face daily throughout our entire lives and hit us where we live. I’ve seen how it can make us better people by giving us an honest and empathetic way of examining our lives.”

Thompson started the Rubber Chicken Open Mic and Poetry Slam 14 years ago, which he still hosts at East Village Coffee Lounge in Monterey. Every month or so he travels back to Brooklyn where in 2014 he took over running his father’s Frank Silvera Writers Workshop, which he started with actor Morgan Freeman in 1973. The workshop develops new plays and playwrights.

The Winemaker | Gary Pisoni

Gary Pisoni led the charge to put Santa Lucia Highlands on the California wine map and give some prestige to the area’s pinot grapes. He now makes wine with his sons Mark and Jeff in Gonzales, where Pisoni himself was raised and then raised his own family. His favorite wine, he says, “is the one in my glass.”

The Educator | Helen Rucker

Helen Rucker has made it her life goal to improve lives on the Monterey Peninsula. The 84-year-old Seaside resident is a longtime civil rights activist and educator. She spent many years as a member of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District board and worked in the Monterey County chapter of the NAACP. She was a Seaside City Council member from 1992-98.

The Councilmember | Kayla Jones

Kayla Jones ran – and won – for Seaside City Council as a 23-year-old student enrolled at Monterey Peninsula College. Jones is new to local politics herself, but has worked with both Barack Obama’s and Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. She’s also acquainted with local politics through her grandmother, who was a longtime political aide to the District 4 county supervisor and worked for just-retired Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel.

Jones says one of the most surprising things about running for office was the ageism and sexism in local politics. Even though she says her grandmother warned her about it, it was worse that she anticipated. She’ll be the only woman on the five-member council.

The Coffee Roaster | Larry Thurman

Larry Thurman is one half of the couple who owns Acme Coffee Roasting Co. Thurman and his wife, Jaki, started the Seaside shop 12 years ago after Thurman, a native of Salinas, got out of the Army and needed another job because, as he puts it, “Artillery skills don't translate into a job in civilian life.” Thurman has roasted for or worked with all the coffee roasters on the Monterey Peninsula and says the timing was perfect for opening his own shop after Morgan Christopher had closed Morgan’s in Monterey. “A great cup of coffee is a cup made on purpose,” Thurman says. “I don't have to like a cup of coffee to think it is great.”

The Politician | Leon Panetta

Carmel Valley native Leon Panetta has been all over the world for a career that began as a legislative assistant to Republican U.S. Sen. Thomas Kuchel in 1966. He spent 15 years as a U.S. congressman, followed by a stint as chief of staff for President Bill Clinton then Secretary of Defense and director of the CIA under President Barack Obama. In the 2012 movieZero Dark Thirty – based on the Navy SEAL operation that killed Osama Bin Laden – Panetta is played by the late actor James Gandolfini. “I’m just glad they got an Italian to play me!” Panetta says.

His favorite thing about Monterey County, he says with a laugh: “It is 3,000 miles from Washington.”

One of his favorite places to “just watch the waves” is from turnouts along Ocean View Boulevard near the Pacific Grove lighthouse.

The Businessman | Nader Agha

Nader Agha was born in Syria in 1943, the eldest of 12 children. In 1965, he arrived in the U.S. at age 22 with $17, and stayed with an uncle who worked at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey. In one of Agha’s greatest early business victories, he swapped two chinchillas for a duplex on Meyers Court in Salinas. Then he borrowed $2,500 on it to buy a six-unit building on Hebron Street. Agha kept borrowing and buying and flipping until, at age 25, he says he owned more than 100 housing units.

More recently, Agha has been behind the People’s Moss Landing Water Desal Project, a desalination project proposal that would be based out of his Moss Landing Business Park.

“I loved Monterey from the first time I saw it,” Agha says. “The weaved fabric of my American dream is here.”

The Volunteer | Penny Vieregge

Penny Vieregge loves to give back to her Big Sur community. At 88, she volunteers as a preschool teacher at Captain Cooper School and at the Esalen Institute. She raised three children and 27 foster children after settling in her Sycamore Canyon home. Her late husband, Paul Vieregge, was the original production manager for the Monterey Jazz Festival, where Penny still volunteers every year. Her outlook it simple: “Community is love. In my framework, kindness keeps flowing around,” she says. “We are all designed to love and to share. It’s nothing we have to do, but say yes to it.”

The Fire Spirit | Rosalia Webster

Webster says she starting performing out of necessity, to cure boredom. She grew up off Willow Creek Road on the South Coast of Big Sur where a combination of no television, internet connection, or even phones or electricity helped her cultivate self-reliance and resourcefulness that evolved into creativity and performance. She started dancing at age 4. Years later, in 2000, she started a troupe with her best friend Jessica Cooper that morphed into the fire-spinning cabaret now known as BiG SuRCuS.

The Cellist | Rushad Eggleston

Rushad Eggleston is a Carmel native, but has traveled all over the world by way of his cello. He won a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music for strings, but did not fully follow the traditional track of classical music, instead doing his own thing. In the Eggleston-led rock trio Tornado Rider, he plugs the cello into an amplifier and plays it like a guitar, complete with distortion. The entire band dresses up in wacky costumes for songs like “I’m a Falcon” and “The Goat God.” Eggleston’s solo shows follow in a similar vein. He’s also unafraid to write songs in his made-up language about goblins and his family.

The Peacemaker | Steven Goings

Steven “Quazar” Goings, who grew up in Seaside and Fort Ord, has a goal: to bridge seemingly disparate groups, including the African-American, LGBTQ, spiritual, peace and justice, and student communities. He does this from various positions: He’s a past president of the Monterey Peace and Justice Center, a past secretary at the local National Coalition Building Institute and an adviser to the CSU Monterey Bay chapter of the NAACP. He identifies himself as “two-spirit,” a term from the spiritual gay men’s group Radical Faeries, which itself adopted the notion from a Native American way of respecting people who are gay.