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Jess Alford shunned big-city life to get close to nature, and his photographs of birds and other wildlife give back to the New Mexico environment
"When I lived in Dallas, I had to drive 200 to 250 miles to get out of development," he says. "Here, I'm on the edge of the Cibola National Forest. I just have to walk out the door to be in nature." Which is where, Alford, 71, has decided he wants to be, where he needs to be. Ten years ago, he shucked an award-winning career as a commercial photographer in Texas to find a less frantic but more fulfilling life in New Mexico's natural world. "I wanted more adventures in my life," he says. Now, in his home six miles south of Tijeras, his life is sparked by the adventure that comes with feeling the pulse of the planet beneath his feet and by the satisfaction that comes with taking photographs that promote healthy habitats rather than consumer goods.
"I go through 100 pounds of sunflower seed a month," he says as he stands on his wood deck. "When the black-headed grosbeaks are here in the spring, they almost eat me out of house and home." He's not complaining. You can tell because his blue eyes and ruddy face - framed by frost-white hair and beard - glow when he talks about something that pleases him. His eyes and face light up even when he's talking about bear damage. "A bear did that," he says, pointing to a section of wood plank and wire screen that has been ripped from his system of bird feeders. "I've been here more than eight years, and I haven't ever seen a bear. But they've pooped all over my yard and torn holes in the window screen over my kitchen sink." But that's what he gets for wanting more adventures. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Alford's two-bedroom, two-bath, two-level home is in the Ramblewood addition south of Tijeras. He figures 100 or so people are scattered through the mountains around here. He knows a lot of them. "I'm friends here with more people than anywhere I have ever lived," he says. The first place he lived was on the family ranch in Paris, Texas, northeast of Dallas. Looking back on it now, he can trace both his love of birds and photography to his childhood. "Dad was a cattle rancher, and he would clear land," Alford says. "But he would always leave some (trees and brush) for the birds. He always fed the birds at our house, and he was the first person I saw who fixed up a bird feeder with running water." He concedes he was not conscious of his affection for birds back then. "But I think that was already inside of me." Photography was another matter. He got interested in that when he saw other people studying it at a summer camp in Kerrville, Texas. "I had a darkroom in a closet in my house when I was 9 years old," he says. "I remember as a kid loving to get Life magazine. I devoured the pictures in that magazine. I'm not sure I read a word, but I loved the pictures." He wasn't exactly a wildlife photographer in those childhood days on the family ranch. Back then Alford's photos were mostly snapshots of family and friends. "I do think I photographed my dog at that time," he says. "And there was this semidomestic duck that used to wander around the place. I remember taking a picture of that duck sitting on my horse's back. That was about as wild as it got." Alford's early adult life followed a course totally different from the one he treads today. After graduating from the University of Texas with a business administration degree in 1954, he joined the Air Force and piloted a variety of aircraft, including B-25s, from 1955 to 1958. After the Air Force, he worked in the real estate business in Dallas for about 10 years. "I didn't like it, and I was terrible at it," he says. "I decided I could go on in real estate or do something I really loved. That's when I started knocking on doors of advertising photographers." He learned the ropes from veterans in the business so well that in 1985, he won a Clio, an international advertising award, for his photo of an egg yolk falling from a cracked shell into a skillet heating on a stove's burner. "I went through 13 dozen eggs on that one," he says. Alford specialized in photographing food and small products and got to where he was making a good living - even if he wasn't always living a life that was good for him. He got married, fathered a son and a daughter and got divorced. He got married again - and divorced again. He became an alcoholic. Even during these tough times in the 1970s and early '80s, it was his appreciation of nature that provided a lifeline. He worked with the Texas Committee on Natural Resources and put in two years taking photographs for "A Guide to the Wilderness Areas of East Texas," a book published by the University of Texas in 1986. But it was something that happened in 1984 that marked a real turning point in his life. "At the time, I was dating a woman who was an environmentalist," he says. "I was doing a big food shoot that lasted about 10 days. She had never seen me work, so she came down to the studio to watch. "She said, 'Jess, as much as you like the outdoors, I don't see how you stay in here. It doesn't even have any windows.' " The woman's words hit home. "For a long time I had wanted to get out of the studio and out of the big city," he says. "I knew then I had to develop another specialty. I became an environmental photographer." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not far from Alford's house is a ponderosa pine that has a dead spot in it about 15 feet off the ground. "But for some reason or other, it has sprouted limbs on either side of the dead spot and has got to be a large, healthy tree," he says. "It got to a point in life where it had to make a change." Alford, who admits he perceives lessons everywhere in nature, sees this tree as a metaphor for his own life and changes he has made. He has been sober for 16 years. His diet today is mostly vegetarian, he runs several miles three or four times a week and hikes up the mountain above his home on those days he doesn't run. His weight, once close to 200 pounds, is down to a trim 152 stretched over his 5-foot-9-inch frame. "There were times in my life when I treated my body like a toxic waste dump," he says. "Now, I consider the great gifts in my life to be my body and the planet it lives on. "And the way I express my appreciation is by doing everything I can to sustain the health of both." About eight years ago, Alford joined WildEarth Guardians, a Santa Fe environmental advocacy organization. Today he is vice president of the organization's board of directors and an active supporter of its programs - especially WildEarth Guardians' ongoing battle to save New Mexico's public lands from overgrazing by cattle. "I was looking for an organization that was not afraid to tackle controversial issues," he says. His photographs celebrate not only the birds and other wildlife that thrive in New Mexico's natural habitat, but also the successes registered by the Guardians - like that overgrazed stretch of Santa Fe River the group has restored to vitality by replanting cottonwoods and willows along the banks. John Horning, executive director of the WildEarth Guardians, calls Alford an inspiration. "I hope I'm raising as much hell and having as much fun as Jess is when I'm his age," Horning, 38, says. "He's still fighting the good fight, not only as a board member of WildEarth Guardians but in the way he is always challenging himself to think differently about the status quo." Horning says our culture makes it easy to check out, be a consumer and just fit in with the mainstream. "Jess not only resists that, but his irreverence seems to grow every year," he says. Alford gives what he can to nature - his time, his money, his photographs. But he feels he can never give enough to compensate for what he gets back in quiet contentment, in the sheer magic and majesty of it all. He points to a trip he and Horning took in the Gila Wilderness in October of 2003. "I had never heard elks bugle before that," he says. "We were camped out and elk were bugling all night. It was like they were circling us, like they were all around. "It was kind of creepy sounding, but it was beautiful, too." - Copyright 2005 Albuquerque Tribune - Reprinted with permission |
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TIJERAS, Jan 21- Jess Alford is sitting in his living room on a recent, gray, chilly morning, sucking in the warmth from a wood-burning stove and a steaming cup of green tea as he watches the fluttered comings and goings of birds just outside the windows of his Manzanita Mountains home. 
An advocate for the environment armed with a camera, Alford specializes in photographing the birds that each day cluster by the hundreds around the feeders on his deck and around the pond he created in his yard. info@wildearthguardians.org | © WildEarth Guardians | Historical Archives | Privacy Policy