Couffer was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on the film version of the novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1974).
Couffer has described his subsequent career as follows:[4]With his mixed abilities as a naturalist and film maker, Jack joined Walt Disney Studios as a cameraman on the early True Life Adventure series of nature films.
He worked at Disney for more than ten years in a variety of functions--writer, director, producer, cameraman--and participated there in the making of more than two dozen movies.Among many other projects with Disney, Couffer wrote, directed, and filmed the documentary The Legend of the Boy and the Eagle (1967).
Couffer has also worked on numerous independent and major studio films and television shows.
Couffer was credited as a cinematographer for the influential, experimental documentary The Savage Eye (1959), and received his nomination for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for the film Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973).