Thomas D. Mangelsen

Images of Nature: The Photographs of Thomas D. Mangelsen by Charles Craighead is a folio about the stories behind some of Thomas D. Mangelsen's best known photographs.

Each chapter beings with a description of the natural setting. Craighead includes summaries of the animals, the time of day, and the challenges involved in taking photographs of nature in action. Besides expensive lenses, the process involves a lot of time and patience.

Mangelsen takes his equipment to remote, often wet, places at early hours. He researches the most active places for the type of animal he wishes to photograph and then he's there to capture them on film. But animals work on their own schedule. Weather interferes. But weather can also add drama.

Images of Nature ends with Mangelsen describing his equipment. As the book dates from the 1990s, his equipment includes a variety of film stock and there is no discussion of digital photography. That said, the over all advice of known your subject, know your equipment, and be patient is still very useful.… (plus d'informations)

The photos in this book are outstanding, although knowing much of Mangelsen's other work, this is not a surprise. To the amateur, the photos might seem not quite 'all that', and Thomas makes few apologies for the nearly impossible shooting conditions. It was bitterly cold, the lenses required to shoot in very low light are incredibly heavy-- some of these are more than 35 pounds just for one lens and require one or two tripods-- and any subtle movement by the animal can blur the photo due to the low light. But Mangelsen won't go into details about that because the photos he provides are likely the best that anyone could have taken. Cara Shea Blessley's accompanying story is a wonderful explanation of how a family of mountain lions briefly moved into a cave on a Butte just outside the ski town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming and provided an extremely rare glimpse into the life of a reclusive animal in the wild. Mangelsen has other books of his photography, but none capture the spirit of a singular once-in-a-lifetime event like this one does.… (plus d'informations)