SIGHTS AROUND TOWN : Nature’s Best : At John Nichols Gallery in Santa Paula, photographs of sprawling beauty elicit a local response.

While the photographs in Michael Moore’s Los Padres Project can be striking in their own right, one of the project’s valuable side effects is that it gives the Ventura County viewer a solid sense of regional appreciation. The exhibit, now up at John Nichols in Santa Paula, wouldn’t play as well elsewhere, so tied is its message to the heart of the area.

By documenting scenes in Los Padres National Forest, he ennobles a piece of property that perhaps hasn’t gotten its due credit, dwarfed as it is by more legendary, monumental natural wonders in California.

The Los Padres may suffer something of an inferiority complex when compared to Yosemite or the High Sierra. Moore persuades us to reconsider things by revealing the beauty around and behind us. His is an admiring, considered view of our quiet but looming back yard.

Timeliness is on Moore’s side. He began his ongoing project in March, 1991, with the idea of heightening awareness of the area through slide presentations, lectures and exhibitions. In search of imagery, Moore traversed the sprawling, varied landscape bordered by Valencia, Santa Paula, Cuyama to the north and Santa Barbara.

Recently, the National Forest made national news, as President Bush signed into legislation the Sespe Wilderness Act. The act officially preserves and protects 450 square miles of wild terrain and 31.5 miles of the Sespe River, which, as Moore points out in a statement, is “the longest unaltered river in Southern California.”

There remains the unfinished business, however, of lobbying for the unprotected length of the Sespe River and of preserving the Chumash rock paintings, which have fallen prey to vandalism and abuse.

The subplot in Moore’s project is advocacy, but the goal is to capture beauty and give viewers a sense of wonder about his subject.

Of course, the point can be made that beauty in a landscape context is a malleable property, subject to the sensitivity an artist can bring to it. Certainly, Moore’s work gains appreciable luster through aesthetic means, with a keen eye for light, color, composition and general sense of place.

His is hardly the cool, objective approach to documentation, but his underlying agenda is documentary in nature. His is a specific mission regarding a specific terrain. And, looking at these images, we never quite make the mental shift that allows art to transcend specificity into universality.

Still, the ecological intent of the series is soft-pedaled, secondary to the immediate visual appeal. The most didactic Moore gets in the exhibit is the black and white shot, “Take Only Memories, Leave Only Footprints,” which serves as an introduction of sorts.

Elsewhere, Moore shows Cibachrome prints in the main gallery and, along the back wall, a few small black and white images with a more intimate, animal’s-eye-view.

“Divisions” is the largest piece of the lot, a triptych displaying the panoramic sweep of the Santa Ynez Valley as it is first seen driving over San Marcos Pass, from Paradise Road. It’s a familiar and luxurious view sure to be impinged upon by development in the coming years.

On a clear day after the rain, such as Moore captured here, the casual smattering of oaks sit on a green carpet of wild grasses under a violet sky.

A challenge Moore faces is how to show the best side of a largely arid forest. Some images bask in the dry thicket, becoming stark portraits of tangly gray and brown.

In the image he tellingly calls “Green,” misty fog and moss-covered rocks convey a wetland illusion. He might also wait for a flattering shaft of sunlight to showcase a burst of color in a tree amid the brush.

Other handy devices in the landscape photographer’s bag crop up: In “Metallic,” the focal point is an almost eerily shimmering wet rock face; he transforms rushing water into a dreamy, creamy white substance. A shot of Boulder Creek finds a few boulders--the protagonists in the image--awash in this milky waterflow.

An expansive view at sunset from on high shows scattered pines amid bulbous boulders looking into a distance without a sign of civilization in sight.

The finest image of all is a deceptively simple shot taken on Figueroa Mountain, in which five trees line up into a kind of wedge formation that locks the composition grid into place. The sloping wild grassland behind sets up a diagonal line that traverses the wedge and completes its visual rhythm.

Here, and in Moore’s best work, he manages to make that delicate leap from reportage to artistic expression. The surest sign of success in this show is a necessarily local response. It encourages a healthy curiosity about the proverbial back yard, and makes you want to get out the hiking shoes.

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FURTHER ADVENTURES IN NATURE: For another take on landscape photography, proceed to the window gallery at Jaffe’s Camera, featuring James Ponder’s close-up views of mostly nature-related textures. These are images of cracked earth, the tactile surface of rusted metal, and macrocosmic views of natural fragments, a la Edward Weston.

Ventura’s Ponder has a good feel for the abstracting qualities of black and white. The fine details captured with the large-format 8-by-10 camera add to the allure.

While the pursuit of nature imagery is, for the most part, Ponder’s calling with this set of photographs, the most memorable image is that of a curvaceous 1950s model sedan nestled in the snow. It might be subtitled “The Mystery and Melancholy” of a car.

* WHERE AND WHEN

* Photographs from Michael Moore’s “Los Padres Project” through Sept. 30 at John Nichols Gallery, 910 E. Main St., Santa Paula. Information: 525-7804.

* James Ponder, “Waves of Distant Shores: Photographs from the Past Three Years,” through Sunday at Jaffe’s Camera and Video, 2640 E. Main St., Ventura. Information: 643-2231.