![\"Ron](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/STC-L-NSRRJONES2-1028.jpeg\")
Ron “R.R.” Jones photographed in his Sash Mill studio in when he was honored with a Gail Rich Award in 2001. (Shmuel Thaler \u2014 Santa Cruz Sentinel file)<\/p>\nSANTA CRUZ \u2014 Whether capturing the vibrancy of Santa Cruz\u2019s local art scene or the customs of different cultures abroad, Ron \u201cR.R.\u201d Jones used his camera to bring a light to the human experience. On Oct. 3, that creative voice was silenced when Jones died of complications from a rare heart disease. He was 76.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a knack for capturing a moment in his art,\u201d said his longtime partner Jody Alexander.<\/p>\n
Jones went by many names. He was born Ronald Ray Jones, professionally went by R.R. Jones (sometimes stylized without capital letters as \u201cr.r. jones\u201d) and known to friends as Jonesie. He was the house photographer for local arts institutions like Kuumbwa Jazz, The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and Shakespeare Santa Cruz\/Santa Cruz Shakespeare but also captured images of local and regional artwork as well as commercial photography for businesses like Pacific Cookie Co. and Love Apple Farms, and traveled to places like Mexico and Southeast Asia to document the cultures there.<\/p>\n
Ron “R.R.” Jones photographed in his Sash Mill studio in when he was honored with a Gail Rich Award in 2001. (Shmuel Thaler \u2014 Santa Cruz Sentinel file)<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he was photographing live performances, he just knew what he was looking for,\u201d said Alexander. \u201cHe knew when to click, and it was pretty amazing to see the outcome of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones was born Nov. 7, 1949, in Houston, played football and took up surfing as a teenager, ultimately moving to San Diego at 17. At community college, he became enamored with photography after learning from masters like Justice Ahrend and Ross Russell, a jazz producer and historian who took photos of the Newport Jazz Festival. Starting in the \u201970s, he began traveling to Mexico in a Volkswagen bus with a camera in hand.<\/p>\n
Jones\u2019 Mexico photography<\/a> set the tone for a lot of his work. His photos are not the typical glamor shots of Cancun one can see on a scroll through Instagram nowadays, but the harsh realities the country has had to deal with for a long time. Photos include a shot of a graveyard commemorating the 45 victims of the 1997 massacre of a Catholic Indigenous prayer meeting and portraits of a Zapatista and blind man with his son. He also captured upbeat black-and-white photos of a rodeo queen, girls in Mayan garb and a cross-dressing performer at the Stardust nightclub in Michoac\u00e1n.<\/p>\n \u201cMy job, as a photographer, is to find the particular moment when something profound, deeply personal, and true, is revealed in a way that can be shared,\u201d Jones wrote in the artist statement on his website. \u201cThe message is there \u2014 I just have to find it in order to pass it along.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones moved to Santa Cruz in 1986 so his then-wife could be closer to her family who lived in Aptos. Even after the divorce, Jones remained in Santa Cruz and became the photographer for many local institutions. Most notably, he was the house photographer of Kuumbwa Jazz where he took photos of local musicians as well as big names who played the venue like Wynton Marsalis, Booker T. Jones and Esperanza Spalding.<\/p>\n Tim Jackson, Kuumbwa Jazz co-founder, said he had gotten to know Jones as he worked out of a studio next to the venue. When Kuumbwa Jazz\u2019s house photographer left, Tim Jackson was able to convince Jones to take over.<\/p>\n \u201cHe wasn\u2019t just a photographer,\u201d he said. \u201cHe was a real artist, and his artistry showed through in his photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n Tim Jackson said Jones\u2019 photos were more than just documentation of Kuumbwa Jazz\u2019s shows but artistry in their own right. He often referred to Jones as \u201cthe mayor of Cedar Square,\u201d as he was a fixture of the block that included Kuumbwa Jazz and businesses like The Alley-Oop and The Bagelry, often being the first to arrive.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019d meet me in the parking lot, and he\u2019d want to talk about the show the night before,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019d do a Monday morning quarterbacking of the show and processed it together. He lived an artistic life, always thinking about art and music. To have somebody that committed was a really special thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Bennett Jackson, Kuumbwa Jazz\u2019s creative director and Tim Jackson\u2019s son, said Jones had been a fixture at the venue for decades.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was as much of an artist as the musicians who played the Kuumbwa stage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Bennett Jackson said Jones was generally conservative with taking photos but always knew when to capture the key emotional moments during performances.<\/p>\n \u201cHe knew when to wait and when to press the shutter right at the moment that would capture the height of the emotion that was taking place between the artists on stage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Ellen Primack, former executive director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, appreciated how quickly Jones was able to gain the trust of the musicians and composers he photographed.<\/p>\n \u201cHe just was disarming and endearing, and people loved him,\u201d she said. \u201cHe captured the magic in everyone. It was through his eyes, so he saw people as beautiful. He saw things for the energy they had and the artistic accomplishment that was happening in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n The skills Jones brought to his Mexico photography were also prevalent in his Southeast Asian<\/a> photography. He captured grim images like the Khmer Killing Fields in Cambodia and refugee camps in Thailand but also spiritual images like a young monk getting his head shaved, various Buddha statues and the Balinese Day of Silence, a Hindu commemoration of the new year.<\/p>\n Jones\u2019 daughter, Sarah Jones Albert, recalled tagging along with her father at 17 to photograph priests in remote villages in Bali, which she described as a major \u201cculture shock.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe would go to places where they didn\u2019t stereotypically have tourists,\u201d she said. \u201cThey would come running out and bring all these foods I had never seen. \u2026 They just wanted to have you there and interact with you.\u201d<\/p>\n Albert said it was overwhelming after a bit, and her father arranged for someone to take her to the beach on a few days, but she appreciated the work her father was doing.<\/p>\n \u201cHe certainly had a way of finding very unique people and allowing them to express the things that are most important to them or their way of life and capturing it in a photograph,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Jones\u2019 photos have been featured at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Denver Art Museum and in the collections of Stanford University and UC Santa Cruz. In 2001, he was the recipient of a Gail Rich Award which honored those who exemplified artistry in Santa Cruz County.<\/p>\n Joel Leivick, Stanford photography professor emeritus, said he first knew Jones as the two would see each other exercising at 24 Hour Fitness in the \u201990s but were unaware of each other\u2019s photography work. It was not until Leivick curated a show at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History that Jones attended that they got to know one another after passing each other on the staircase, prompting both to ask, \u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI said \u2018I\u2019m Joel Leivick,\u2019 and he said \u2018No, you\u2019re not,’\u201d said Leivick. \u201cHe\u2019d been told by a mutual friend, somebody that I know in Texas, that he should look me up, but he assumed that I was just some other person.\u201d<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the two became friends afterward, and Leivick appreciated that Jones was able to capture the essence of his subjects.<\/p>\n \u201cTechnically, they were fantastic and he was a prolific artist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Leivick said Jones would often give him advice, even as recently as a few months ago as Leivick was preparing for an exhibit that will open at M.K. Contemporary Art Gallery in November.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cHe had a couple of very salient points to make that I took to heart,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Paul Schraub, a local photographer who shared studio space with Jones for 25 years, appreciated his portraits.<\/p>\n \u201cHe got intimate and made a connection with the people he\u2019s photographing, which is not an easy thing to do,\u201d he said. \u201cI find it hard, especially if you\u2019re doing somebody from a different culture and there\u2019s a language barrier. His technique was good, his framing and printing technique was good, but the brains behind it and the heart behind it was something that I really admired.\u201d<\/p>\n Additionally, Schraub said Jones was somebody he could easily talk to.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a pretty good sounding board,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Alexander met Jones when both were exhibiting at the Art4Art fundraiser at The Mill Gallery in 2008. He worked with artists and galleries to take photos of artwork, including Alexander\u2019s, and determine how each piece could best be presented.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had an amazing eye,\u201d she said. \u201cHe could spot what was right or wrong with a composition in a second.\u201d<\/p>\n In May 2025, after years of struggling with heart issues, Jones was diagnosed<\/a> with a rare condition called cardiac amyloidosis<\/a>, in which abnormal proteins build up in the heart muscle and restrict blood pumping. This caused complications over the next year until his death Oct. 3.<\/p>\n Albert said her father was unlike himself after the diagnosis but had a very jovial personality beforehand that she will always choose to remember.<\/p>\n \u201cHe really lived his life in the moment,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is a way to live your life that allows you to find these beautiful, magical moments and document them. It\u2019s just something that a lot of adults don\u2019t have, that playful, fun nature.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to Alexander and Albert, Jones is survived by his granddaughter Paige Albert. His work can still be viewed at RRJones.com<\/a> and RRJonesPhoto.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was hard to integrate any notion that that big presence is no longer here, and I\u2019ve been trying to live with that,\u201d said Primack. \u201cHis presence is here in every photo he took and every gift he gave, and we\u2019re all missing the physical part of him in our space right now.\u201d<\/p>\n A celebration of life is scheduled for 2 p.m. Nov. 22 at Kuumbwa Jazz, 320 Cedar St., Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTA CRUZ \u2014 Whether capturing the vibrancy of Santa Cruz\u2019s local art scene or the customs of different…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,376186,376185,41029],"class_list":["post-897301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-kuumbwa-jazz","tag-ron-jones","tag-santa-cruz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photographer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/STC-L-NSRRJONES-1028-03.jpeg\")
Photographer Ron “R.R.” Jones in 2014. (Shmuel Thaler \u2014 Santa Cruz Sentinel file)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/STC-L-NSRRJONES6.jpg\")
A young dancer in the Balinese town of Ubud captured by Santa Cruz photographer Ron “R.R.” Jones. Jones frequently visited Bali and other foreign locales to document the cultures. (Contributed \u2014 Ron Jones photo collection)<\/p>\n![\"Ron](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/STC-L-NSRRJONES-1028-04.jpeg\")
Ron “R.R.” Jones, far left, working to take a cast photo of “King Lear” when it was presented by Santa Cruz Shakespeare in 2023. Jones was often seen wearing a mask once issues with his health were diagnosed. (Shmuel Thaler \u2014 Santa Cruz Sentinel file)<\/p>\n