The photographer that took this amazing picture, Richard
Jackson, is the subject of this week’s Blog.
I have admired Rick’s breathtaking wildlife and landscape photography
almost as long as I have lived here in Loreto when I started seeing his work
displayed in some select locations in town.
Not long after that, I had the opportunity to meet Rick and his wife
Jill, who are partners in a small “boutique” hotel just off the Malacon here in
Loreto.
Recently, when our paths crossed again I asked Rick if he
would be interested in being profiled in my Blog and you will be happy to learn
he agreed – meeting with me in my Office in Loreto Bay this past week to tell
me his Living Loreto story.
Rick’s Father-in-Law, who is an avid fisherman, had visited
Loreto on frequent trips to the Baja over many years, and Jill and Rick were accompanying
her parents on his retirement trip when they passed through Loreto in early
2004. While walking the Malacon during
that visit they wandered up a side street and saw a sign advertising a
large residential compound for sale, consisting of a main home with 2 small
“casitas” and a partially open boat garage with additional land for further
development.
One thing led to another and before long Jill and Rick had
become partners with her parents in the property which, after adding a couple
of more casitas and a swimming pool, later that year became their new hotel,
Las Cabanas de Loreto ( www.lascabanasdeloreto.com
). When Jill and her parents returned to
Loreto that fall to begin operating their new hotel, Rick carried on with his
successfully established business travelling to art shows across the US,
selling his prints of his wildlife photography.
Rick’s fascination with wildlife and photography had it’s
beginnings watching “Wild Kingdom” every week with his Father when he was
growing up, and carried on into Junior College where he took Zoology as the
courses closest to his passion that he could find. But, it was finally with the help of an Uncle
that Rick was able to buy his first serious camera and lenses and set up a
small darkroom, when he finally was able to pursue his passion for
photographing nature and wildlife.
His career got off to an inauspicious beginning, at the
first “swap meet” he attended as a vendor he failed to sell any of his early
collection of wildlife pictures – but from that initial experience he quickly
learned about the art shows that became a circuit that he worked diligently and
with growing success over the next three decades.
From that point on Rick and Jill’s life became an exotic
blend of a “gypsy-like” tour of art shows, where he developed a clientele for
his super realistic “once-in-a-lifetime” images of wildlife and landscape, alternated
with field trips shared with Jill to distant locations like Africa and
Antarctica where he restocked his collection of images, and almost as
importantly the stories behind the images, that became his inventory for the
art show tours. In addition to the
retail side of the business Rick has also had his work published in Audubon and
Outdoor Magazine as well as Sierra Club books and posters.
Meanwhile, starting about 7 years ago with the opening of
the hotel, Jill and his in-laws were living and working at building up the
hotel business with growing success, particularly after achieving the coveted
first place ranking for Loreto in Tripadvisor, which they have proudly
maintained for a number of years. Over much
the same period of time as the hotel business was building, Rick was seeing a
drop off in customers for his photography at the art shows due to the declining
economic situation in the US and the reduced amount of disposable income
generally.
As the numbers of art shows that he attended declined Rick began
to shift his focus (no pun intended) more towards Loreto, where he found much
to satisfy his appetite for natural history; perfectly situated as it is
between the beautiful Sierra de la Gigante mountains, the Sea of Cortez and the
collection of near-by islands, all of which provides him with more than enough
inspiration and subject material to continue to grow his photographic
collection. He still maintains a
striking website www.SoulCatchingImages.com
where you can view and order his work and he still attends the occasional art
show in the US, but now his and Jill’s life is centered here in Loreto.
But there is a new chapter about to begin for both of them
here. They will be opening a shared
Office/Gallery on the town square in Loreto, where Jill will base her growing
Real Estate business and Rick will be able to display his photographic art to visitors
and residents of Loreto. This exciting
new enterprise will enable many more people to see the beauty and natural
wonder that surrounds us here, through the gifted eyes of an artist of Rick’s
caliber.
What started for me as a fascination with the stunning
images I had seen (that make my photographs look like “snapshots”), and led me
to approaching Rick about being a Blog subject, has given me a doorway into
learning more about his and Jill’s life and what brought them to Loreto. Now, with this understanding, I am even more impressed
with the fact that this couple, who have travelled to some of the most
spectacular places on earth to capture iconic images of natural beauty, have
chosen to settle here and find the source of inspiration that all of us who are
here understand – but few have the talent to express so memorably! Truly in Rick’s art we can see a gifted
vision of “Living Loreto”!
This week I heard the sad news that a friend Alberto Perez had passed away suddenly. I had gotten to know "Beto" on my occasional visits to El Caballo Blanco, the bookstore here in Loreto her ran with his wife Jeannine, and I mentioned him in a recent posting about a lecture held in the store "A Glimpse of Loreto's History, Nov. 2012".
Although I did not know Beto well, I looked forward to visiting with him when I visited the store and will remember him sitting in a comfortable chair in the back room, talking about the books he loved that surrounded him there.
My condolences to Jeannine and his many friends in Loreto and beyond.
