Like so many beauty contestants, scores of 2008 calendars are lined up on the shelves as if aching to be chosen — in this case, as Christmas gifts.

Among the offerings for 2008 are three homegrown calendars. One highlights rare Santa Clara River Valley citrus labels, another features the most picturesque spots in Ventura County and a third celebrates the bare essence of 12 Ojai women.

Trash to treasure

From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, careful attention was paid to the design of the citrus labels on the wooden crates that came from Ventura County's Santa Clara River Valley.

Then came cardboard boxes, with labels printed on the cardboard; stick-on labels became obsolete.

"Labels were a big deal from the 1880s to the 1950s," said Ray Morua of Santa Paula, an expert on citrus labels. "When we went from wooden to cardboard, thousands languished in basements. Then they became fire hazards."

After the labels were determined to be hazardous, growers started tossing them into dumps or burning them. As a result, few of the labels remain and they have become collectors' items.

For the second year in a row, the Rotary Club of Ventura is sponsoring a calendar showcasing some of these rare labels, compliments of a collection Morua started more than half a century ago, as a boy growing up in Santa Paula. (A second-generation native son, Morua said his dad also was born in Santa Paula, in 1909.)

"When I got my first work permit, I was in the seventh grade," said Morua, now 66. "They spread out everybody to work in different places in the summer. I got to be over at the dump in Santa Paula in those days. They would burn the labels there so I used to take some home. My dad used to get mad at me."

Morua spent the next 40 years working construction, and collecting labels in the area. Today, Morua has about 900 labels, which he trades professionally. Some, from the 19th century, are hand-painted. Those created in the early 20th century through the 1950s were lithographed; metal plates were used to print them.

"These labels had no value when I started to pick them up; there were not books, no prices on these things," Morua said. "I stayed with those labels."

Today, some of them are worth $1,000, if not more, depending on their rarity.

One of Morua's favorites, which made it onto this year's calendar, is a 1901 label from the citrus fields of Rancho Camulos. It honors the heroine in author Helen Hunt Jackson's book "Ramona," which was set at Rancho Camulos.

Other favorites in his collection include a 1902 label from a Fillmore citrus company that features a man pedaling a blimp. Another standout is a label from the Piru Citrus Association depicting the Piru Mansion.

Morua loves collecting labels because they are little bits of Ventura County history. And he enjoys the memories it stimulates for those who live in the Santa Clara River Valley.

"A lot of people, they still remember when they used to work in packinghouses in the mid-'40s and early '50s," Morua said.

This year's edition is called "The Ventura County Calendar 2008: Very Rare Citrus Labels From Ventura County." The calendar has been a popular fundraiser for the Rotary Club.

The idea for the calendar came from the director of the Museum of Ventura County, Tim Schiffer, who was president of the Ventura Rotary Club at the time. Schiffer noticed how much people enjoyed the local citrus label exhibit on display last year at the museum and suggested a citrus label calendar.

"Last year we chose the labels from the museum collection," said Betsy Chess, chairwoman of the Ventura Rotary Club. "We printed 5,000 and we sold all 5,000. This year we printed 6,500 and we've already moved 5,500."

A hometown calendar

As he has since 1993, 30-year Ventura County resident Tim Hauf has trained his lens on Ventura County's loveliest spots to create his annual calendar: "Ventura County — 2008 Calendar by Tim Hauf."

Among the photos are Anacapa Island at sunset; tall ships moored in the Ventura marina; and a humpback whale plunging through the Santa Barbara Channel, sea spray jeweling its tail.

"I certainly look for color," Hauf said, when asked how he chooses his locations, "and something basically showing what the average person can see as they drive along the county a little, things we see every day but don't take time to look at — like the reflection of a sailboat mast."

Each year, Hauf said, he tries to capture the area's scenic diversity, from Camarillo mustard fields to the spinning lights of the Ventura County Fair Ferris wheel.

Hauf, 58, is a self-taught photographer who has won numerous national awards.

Born in North Dakota, he moved to California after graduating from college, hoping to find a job. He lived in Somis, then Ventura and then Ojai. He moved to Washington state about seven years ago because of rising housing prices in Ventura, but he says he misses the area and visits frequently.

"I think I'd rather be down there with so many ties and so much familiarity and connections over the years," Hauf said.

Calendar sales each year range from 3,000 to 6,000 copies. As long as they continue to sell well, Hauf plans to continue to capture the essence of Ventura County in an annual calendar.

'The Women of Ojai'

It's dicey enough getting somebody to agree to be photographed for a calendar. Try getting them to agree to be photographed nude.

"Most of them have never posed before, let alone posed nude," said Ojai photographer Attasalina Dews.

Dews' calendar "Beauty is Strength: The Women of Ojai" features 12 Ojai women who range in age from 19 to their mid-50s.

"I sought out a lot of these women," Dews said. "What I was looking for was diversity in age, ethnicity and walks of life. I wanted to express a variety of qualities I felt were integral to Ojai."

Dews said she sought out women who have "walked an unusual path, exhibited power in their own life."

She wanted to photograph them nude because she was following a precedent she established last year with her first themed calendar, "Liberation: The Men of Ojai."

"We wanted to be avant garde and fun," Dews said. "We wanted to do nude men because it's not as common culturally."

The idea came up as a fundraising idea for the Ojai Arts Commission. Someone joked to board member Demitri Corbin that he ought to develop a nude male calendar, and the idea stuck.

Dews said her approach for the nude male calendar was more tongue-in-cheek than the nude female calendar.

"It was a takeoff on how women are dealt with in the media," Dews said. "Women are photographed with a lot of skin exposed and in very sexy poses."

She chose the men with a casting call in which they auditioned — clothed. A committee interviewed the men, saw their head shots, then chose them based on how much the camera liked them.

"Being photogenic is not necessarily being beautiful," Dews said.

The theme of the calendar was "Liberation," meant to illustrate that a man's work should not define his character; his character should define his work.

"Taking away their clothing is taking away status symbols," she said. "We wanted to liberate them from these confines. It should be, I do this because I have something to share,' versus, I do this because I get a big paycheck and drive a Mercedes.'"

With the women's calendar, she took a slightly different approach. "With this calendar I'm trying to express some very specific things about what it means to be in Ojai," Dews explained.

With the women, she tried to give them poses that expressed what they perceived to be their greatest strengths. In each case, Dews tried to express the woman's strength through lighting and poses that were modest, yet edgy.

"It's not so much their physical beauty that we're representing," Dews explained. "Each of the poses represents a kind of strength."

Transformational magic

Ecopsychologist Irasha Pearl's strength was magic, Dews said. Pearl's work involves taking troubled teens on adventures in the natural world. It may be kayaking, hiking in the backwoods or any other number of outdoor activities designed to incorporate the natural world into the psychological healing process — a type of magic, Dews explained.

"People she works with are transformed through this process," Dews said. "That can be what some people call magic."

Talking Pearl into posing for the calendar took some doing, Dews said, but once Pearl understood the concept, she agreed.

English teacher and blues singer April Hendrix, on the other hand, was thrilled to be a part of the calendar. "I did it because it pushed so many buttons for me in terms of beauty and body image and what it means to be a woman and what it means to be an educator and a performer," she said.

Her strength was "soul."

"For me, soul is really breaking through the barriers of our physical makeup and bodily form to access the more inner, most vulnerable parts of ourselves, because that's where the true beauty is," Hendrix said.

Hendrix, who declined to give her age, also is dean of a private school in Ojai, so she believed it necessary to get her boss's approval before posing.

"Because of the nature of our culture, I felt people would pass judgment on a teacher," she said.

Dews, too, knows many may disapprove of the nudity in the calendar, and has already encountered people who object.

"I have no illusions about the taboos I'm dealing with," Dews said. "I want to deal with them."

Dews said she believes people are misunderstanding her artistic intention, which she intended to practice as well as preach. She is one of the 12 women photographed nude in the calendar.

"Nudity in our culture is highly oversexualized," said Dews, 30. "We oversex the nudity, yet when you see real nudity, it's not accepted."

Last year's calendar did not sell out, but Dews is hoping this year's calendar will do better. If it does, the Ojai Arts Foundation will be able to fund donations to school arts programs and establish a fine arts trust.