Shuttering the Shop : After 3 Decades of South County Picture-Taking, Couple to Retire

When Albert and Ardythe Smetona moved to San Clemente in 1963 to escape Los Angeles County smog, friends questioned the couple’s sanity in choosing such a tiny, distant town.

Little did the Smetonas know when they opened a photography shop on Doheny Park Road that their clients would someday include the President of the United States, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s monster, Dana Point City Council members, a popular equestrian ride and thousands of children.

“We’ve had an interesting vocation here,” 69-year-old Albert Smetona said last week. “It’s never been boring.”

After more than three decades of taking pictures and processing film in South County, the Smetonas are preparing for a photo finish. The doors close for good at month’s end.

The couple’s collection of prints and negatives are a catalogue of how South County once was--long before cities such as Laguna Niguel appeared.

The Smetonas’ aerial photos depict San Juan Capistrano when it was surrounded by orange groves and had an airplane landing strip. They show Dana Point when there was more open land than there were buildings. The images captured are of things newcomers may never have seen, and older residents might only remember.

“It’s shocking,” 73-year-old Ardythe Smetona said last week as she sifted through black and white shots. “You can’t go back.”

When the couple opened the Capistrano Beach photo shop in 1964, they had a store in Buena Park that they had opened before moving south and settling in the Shorecliffs area of San Clemente, the seaside city that former President Richard Nixon chose for his West Coast retreat. For a year, Ardythe Smetona made trips north to check on the Buena Park store until the couple sold it in 1965.

“You wouldn’t see any more than three cars until El Toro,” Ardythe Smetona recalled. “There was nothing. No Laguna Niguel, no Mission Viejo.”

But, bit by bit, people began moving into the area. Cities incorporated. Subdivisions sprang up. And customers kept coming through the doors of the photography shop.

At first, the Smetonas did more than just take pictures, develop film and make prints. They would take orders for tuxedos while booking wedding shoots and chase down the formals in Santa Ana. They handled cake orders as well.

With six children, the Smetonas worked hard. Albert Smetona took the photographs. Ardythe Smetona ran the business end.

Their first encounter with Nixon was in 1969 at Mission San Juan Capistrano.

The same day, the Smetonas were invited to take a few frames of the president at the El Adobe Restaurant, just down the street from the mission.

“You were given about 60 seconds,” Albert Smetona said. “The Secret Service agents would hand you a small pin that you wore on your lapel and that would allow you to go into the restaurant.”

The couple later did personal photography work for the Nixons during the 1970s. They made reprints from shots of Nixon’s historic trip to China.

The Smetonas also came to know Lon Chaney Jr., who played the role of the Wolf Man and appeared in many horror films of the 1940s.

Albert Smetona has a large black and white of Chaney, who also appeared in the movie version of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”

Over the past five years, the city of Dana Point has enlisted the Smetonas to take photographs of City Council members for public display at City Hall. Clients of the Smetonas also number thousands of preschool children and the Portola ride, a popular horse event.

Now that the couple is closing down the store, the Smetonas don’t know what to do with the thousands of photos and negatives. They said they may contact the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda to donate some of the photos.

But personally signed cards and photos of Nixon and his wife, Pat, will remain with the Smetona family.

Years back, during leaner economic times for the Smetonas, one friend suggested that Albert Smetona keep a signed Nixon check for work as a keepsake.