Big Bend Artists for Conservation Spotlight: Tim McKenna
If there was a contest for the most interesting man in the world, photographer Tim McKenna would almost certainly be in the running.
For starters, he and his wife live in the middle of nowhere in the wilds of Big Bend about 17 miles from Terlingua, Texas. Their home is an off-the-grid set-up that he built himself out of shipping containers, powered with solar, complete with water catchment devices.
He is an accomplished photographer, and he shares breathtaking images from his corner of the world on his Instagram and Facebook pages. His work is displayed in galleries in Terlingua and Alpine and his images from Big Bend have been viewed in the Bullock State History Museum and around the world. Recently, he donated use of several of his works for display at the new high school in Alpine, Texas. The beautiful images were enlarged for murals, where they will no doubt inspire students for years to come. He posted about that on Facebook, too.
He loves living in Big Bend, and the story of how he got there has been a lifetime in the making.
His first visit to Big Bend happened in 1972, after he left the Army as the Vietnam War was winding down. He visited the following year again and was awestruck by the wide-open spaces of the region. But life got in the way, and he wouldn’t visit again for another 38 years.
He started his professional career in a Houston photo lab, where his lifelong interest in photography took hold. He worked as a professional photographer in a studio, and then for Neiman-Marcus, while also running a commercial tropical plant business. He moved to Austin and took an entry level job as a bank teller, but soon worked his way up in the banking world, eventually taking on the number two role for a bank west of Austin.
He decided to learn how to sail, and after reading every book on the subject in every branch of the Austin Public Library, he and his wife bought a sailing boat. They got involved in the Austin Yacht Club, and won a trophy in the first sailing race they ever entered. He also continued to use his photography skills, writing stories and selling photos to sailing magazines.
And then his landlord decided to sell the house they were living in, and it was time to make a move. A chance encounter in a marine supply store led to the purchase of a yacht and his next life adventure: selling everything they had and moving into a life on the water.
Tim learned how to scuba dive and became a PADI-certified dive instructor. He worked for the City of Austin doing scientific research on the endangered salamanders in Barton Springs and helped maintain an archeological site in Spring Lake in San Marcos. He also was certified as a level five sailing instructor for the American Sailing Association. His wife worked in the travel industry at Apple Computers in Austin. They lived this somewhat idyllic, and always interesting life on a boat for a dozen years.
And then his son moved out to Big Bend.
“We visited several times in 2010, and we ended up buying five acres of land outside of Terlingua,” said Tim. “On the way home to Austin after a Christmas visit, we were in tears because we didn’t want to leave. So, we decided we had one more adventure left in us.”
The intrepid couple once again sold just about everything they had, including the yacht they lived on, and several boats they had accumulated over the years. They started out camping out of their truck, and then added a portable kitchen with a canopy over it and cinder blocks and plywood for a floor. Little by little, they constructed their off-the-grid home in the Chihuahuan Desert.
“We started with five acres and then it was ten, and now it’s right at a hundred,” he said. “It’s been overgrazed by cattle, sheep and goats, and we’re committed to restoring the land to what it once was.”
The majority of the images he captures and shares are taken right out his front door.
“I started posting what I thought was a nice photo every day to make everybody’s world a little better,” said Tim. “That led to more followers on both Facebook and Instagram, and people started to take notice.”
He now has thousands of followers, and his work is widely shared on a variety of social media pages, including on Friends of Big Bend National Park.
He donates work to the National Park Service and local charities, and is especially proud of the work he did with Big Bend Ranch State Park that led to its designation as an International Dark Sky Park.
“Big Bend Ranch park staff asked me to donate my time to produce two studies of the night sky for the Dark Sky application,” said Tim. “These studies are individual time exposures of the night sky later stitched together to cover 360-degree views from two locations to demonstrate the near total darkness devoid of unnatural light within the park. I was very honored and proud when I later learned that the park had achieved this designation and that I was allowed to have a small part in that endeavor.”
The Borderlands Research Institute (BRI) is pleased to feature the work of artists like Tim McKenna who are inspired by the landscapes, night skies, and the wildlife of West Texas. BRI’s Big Bend Artists for Conservation initiative aims to inspire conservation through art, and McKenna is the latest artist to be featured.
“I’m on board with anything that helps conserve this beautiful part of Texas,” said Tim. “This area is so unique and fragile, and we’ve really tried to minimize our footprint out here. Anything that we can do to conserve what we love is something that I would always aspire to and want to support.”
