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Images of Nature Gallery Walk Through

Lesson 22 from: The Art of Wildlife Photography

Tom Mangelsen

Images of Nature Gallery Walk Through

Lesson 22 from: The Art of Wildlife Photography

Tom Mangelsen

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Lesson Info

22. Images of Nature Gallery Walk Through

Lesson Info

Images of Nature Gallery Walk Through

while the creative life team was injected we had her annual um sort of book signing the new book is out and wine and cheese party and gary open house that we used to do in the fall and they were there it was great they got to film it so we're just going to go visit sort of our one gallery uh reception's and then we can talk about um books and other things after that so this was sudden late september at my gallery in jackson e wait twenty seven way have fun or what most incredible thing I've ever shot as faras orders go very great we'll enjoy that and I'll see you out there thank you very much thank you so I'm gonna show you a couple of us she's um uh a variety of different sort of styles and images since this fall now there's a ticket last year in the ozarks and this is what we were you know today we were walking out there with the across the little creek sea otters this I walked out into the creek and and I didn't have any waiters and so uh I was up up to here and my leg is handed rig...

ht yet so I only have one set of clothes and then I realized that my wallet and my cell phone in my pocket so that was not good news way then we had theo realize that the luggage was going to be delayed for another day she had to go to k mart to get some clothes so that's a memorable picture but it was worth it but it was like the others today we had you know you do what you have to do and so way shot you can get it for the bankers the tree's root way so I just want wondered out there into the water and you got the shot so I'm wet most of my life when I do a lot of birds start off birth stayed with birds so she a lot of birds western tanager sze cherry blossoms I spent two weeks at this location waiting for and I just had framed this cause I thought was very oriental asian japanese looking and literally waited two weeks in one spot you know moved around a bit till they blur the background with six hundred with one for extender frame that and this is a really big influx of western canisters that spring and mail a young female another young male and anyway that's you know one of my new favorite bird images this is uh from this last april and tory's piney and had it going in support of photographing pumas most amazing um I think the most amazing mountains I've ever seen in times of great that's a great mountain the last of canada but these this group with stories of planet mountains um spectacularly and we were camp camp down here we're photographing this family bears for eight years it's just three ninety nine and her three spring cubs from two thousand thirteen and I have ah imprint of ah of the bronze we're just made of one of these cups in her feet and it's over here I'll show that to you but this is the first few days out of the den and these little wee cubs were walking down the road but program creek and we call this uh titone rush hour is a puma that we did in tory's opining on uh she's stalking a will not go and I was with diego you met and the intensity of this cat and those eyes this is not a game farm cat which most atari reverse shoot it's not a bullshitting image and game farms are the downfall of nature photography biggest detriments of game for the entire proved that there is there's a lot of professionals and there's a lot of amateurs who want to be professionals do game farm crap if you look at this get you see it's not fat it's lean it's tough muscles and that the ripples and that this is a really deal they went there and spent a month photographing pumas and it's a back drop sometimes of that tory's aplenty picture so there was amazing trip and uh started the cougar fund twelve years ago now and this re inspired me to protect cougars cougars pumas mount land same animal does this south america they call them rumors there they call amount lands in the west they call them cougars in the rocky mountains photograph fight I did this summer with becky our students where her dad is a major sculptor and he was there and she was there studying is sketching wild horses and so he spent a few days there and we've spent another week later on uh another place in wyoming and months another place of montana photograph the wild horses on this is an evening where they all went to the water hole this city it's amazing sunset and made a big panoramic out of that and we'll go downstairs I'll show you a few things downstairs so great hundred owls I spent many weeks um uh two thousand ten and two thousand nine they were nesting in this cottonwood and has this sort of heart shaped hollow and for two years I went there and I spent about I don't know maybe forty fifty days from the time that mother was just her head with out of the hole you know incubating eggs and they hurt her maid would come in and feed her until the chicks hatching and until they you know we're peeking out the hole and she's coming to feed them at night and then until they pledged brother but for for two summers I spent three hundred hours maybe and it's just beautiful because they use a shallow depth of field here I had a six hundred millimeters of one point for extender I want to blow out all this background and I want a vory depth sheldon field but I wanted to make sure that the park els you know weird texture that's the family portrait and it's it's uh you know beautiful all this is sort of a classic one of my favorite fortunes of a leopard sausage she's kind of a classic image of a leopard lining in a sausage street in case you tree of the trees but I want to get something like this my favorite tree and tiny leopard now the friends ever with zoomed in on the leopard they thought this was cool which it wass I want to show how big this tree wass photographed it wide so I could see this side of the tree and this guy and this guy we should give you a perspective on how big this tree wass everybody knows this leopard is probably nine feet long from tip of your nose to the long tail so if you multiply that nine feet nine feet nine feet whatever it's fifty feet wide that's a big free country that's bigger than our redwoods so again what I love to do is these kinds of images slightly hidden character maybe or animal in the landscape would call this a landscape picture landscape of a tree so you see the tree first niecy leopard go wow it's a little surprises what's really cool this people think it think I faked fooled with you know is a film image I shot that in nineteen two thousand two and what about the white background you must have photoshopped that I don't do for shop but do you know we optimize dura image too for color contrasts and things like that that basically is this close this is ninety nine percent like exactly on the fuji one hundred film take a spot meter handheld spot major commission light here here here they're a new this ago white this is five stops difference between that background there was a grass way back there like a like a morning it was hot african sky hot people have in their mind that this would be blue skies not blue good morning when you have hayes and hot erica or here in towns or anyplace else in the desert so that went so overexposed light I don't want anything back when I saw the grass back there but realistic they won't expose this correctly was in the shadows so it was in the shade over exposed that one white graphics and this is what's going on so like my one of my favorite ours robert bateman who could do things with his um paints drawings he doesn't like repeating patterns and things all match up so he's one of my heroes and great great painter so I start looking at this and when you can study it on image so I started making up stuff you can maybe see it maybe it don't it's in my living room so I don't have a small house on a few pictures is when I picked but this sort of you know replicates that you see these will not see the little ears sort of replicates that she does not see that see this sort of you know defecates at this sort of tale kind of thing it's just it's just luck is all you know I didn't see all this all I saw was this is a magical image when I took it I didn't think it actually had all the elements that would make it more interesting picture then of course the color the lycan in the color of the eyes pretty much match I called that shades of sapphire because it's sort of sapphire colored and just that post and she had a little kitten behind tree which I was hoping would come out realistically getting probably made it a cuter image sweeter image we're probably screwed up the composition there's one of the other few pictures that I have in my house it's in the guest room I saw this landscape three years before this this is take it in two thousand one my sign my prince always put the date when they're taking his two thousand I saw this three years earlier so the landscape that when they'd be great if there were a bear walking across that landscape back the next year went back to third year and then I saw this mother with these three new cubs and we spent two weeks there all I wanted was that one picture one picture she had gone into this older bush after week were there what we would do would you go sit on the hill would sit on one of these pieces drift through it we wait her for her to come to us we went go push your way wind go chase after her way went side try to move her to a place we just sit and wait all day one day she went to this older bush where she'd go sleep sometimes on the other side that there was a creek should go catch salmon there and my assistant field night there's the trail went through there kind of a bear chalices let's go interceptor that creek but that wasn't the picture online another creek another image of a bear in a creek way got halfway down the trail that's what this is stupid what if you turned around and I wish it around went back to where I had pre visualized worship I wanted her to be there was just a hunch so way turned around came out here and she was coming right behind this little hill here out that's just oh god there she is I looked at my panoramic camera it was fuji six seventeen it had two frames left and I had to use one eighty lens for that had one o five one eighty three hundred three cameras the one eighty would include that three hundred too tight one of five was too wide so I slammed the tripod down balance it okay I got two frames and serendipity again you can see this shadow here the shadows a lot it was just a lot of clouds but there's this sort of bolt a light that lit the bears and I thought ok don't ploy because these little guys just looked like little blobs behind bear this guy lived it his head up and I wait for the feet to be in the right position on the bear to have the right gesture walking like this it doesn't look like it's tripping over itself they click the shutter click one more frame I gave my camera to my assistant deal she gave me the three hundred and then it was craft like this wasn't nearly as good because of mountains crept out I just shot eight french quickly because I knew it wasn't that great but I hadn't estimate with that comey had estimate it's a view cameras yet has made deaf the fields had to guess how far she was how far this was shot at and shot a thirty two second was the minimum to stop the action of the bear's moving on I wanted to get that in death field so it's like f twenty two at a fifteenth of a second I knew this is not going to be possible being focused that had mejores displeasure color which was nice because this color she gave me the winning shot I should give me she reloaded three interceptors she gave me the three hundred shot off a bunch of friends quickly she gave me back the one eighty I shot eight more frames and at the end of it it said start so she had reloaded a roll of film that I had already shot so had double exposed roll of film and I said oh my god deal what roll of film was that trying to be like composed she's I know I just had a bunch of my pocket I said I hope it wasn't at roll of film that I just shot I kind of want to strangler because she's a very good assistant and very good ninety neighbors in the time and I didn't know of course because it wasn't digital you can't like say okay I gather it didn't like so I waited for another month before I saw that image this's what change my thought about film and digital this's a british columbia's invited there to go with vital ground who's a conservation group who preserves habitat because a very rainy it's called the great bear rainforest north vancouver blackbirds bromberg and our guy we're there for ten days and our guide a little fishing boat the first day we went out for little ricky trip see what was there that's it jeremy could you put a black bear on that point for me you get a black grip there on that point it's how I sure tom yeah no problem you know no two of yours and they laughed went around we're there for ten days last day waiting for the plane to come back and wait a couple hours to kill since let's go back up the coast we can see this bear was down here eating in this kelp bed eating crustaceans and bull iskan clams and wow so we just shut in just enough different up bear went around back here is kind of this is low tide just normally would be water went around that way since the germans or any of the site quick maybe go up on top or maybe get your money aside way get around it is I hee on top but it was a bunch ideas coming down the hill again you try to get down here you can too because they help us to slippery you know help us gets really slippery and jeremy was trying to take his own pictures he's supposed to be the guide rate in the bear turn around it's jeremy turn the boat around pay attention and the bear went up there and he said that's your picture time got the picture you want and I had a film camera d for deport before and it was fifteen or thirty have a second wide open wei slow for being in a boat grab my first digital nikon camera it was a d one like for making pickles crappy basically but they will get four hundred s so out of it shot like six frames that he paused for only like five seconds just switch cameras quickly and I printed that that's the first digital image a reporter and the film was too slow it was blurry so that convinced me uh digital is okay and then when I got home I didn't see it actually when I shot it I don't think so this cable that ah shit people in here excuse me freaking cable here and my assistant andy so I could take that out and photoshopped that says no we don't take that out on photo shop that cable I realize it was a cable that anchored logging barges behind these trees was devastated with clear cuts so this is an old rusty cable that was anchor for the logging barge's so trouble they left fifty years trees to fake people out so you and see the ugly is the clear cut forest you go along so I said let's call this guardian knight inlet guarding one of my favorite bears another wait call her blind because it's a very color very blonde this after a rain like today I'm just saying some kind of light we had but it made her hair sort of stand out sort of prickly sweet little bear we've seen her for three or four years in a row she's old enough now to have cubs and we hope there's a pressure wave was here for years she has a little blade of grass in there again a lot of people would probably photoshopped that I think uh I think that makes the picture so you remember uh yesterday I was talking about down below the river there so this is the idea but this is what I spent three weeks on end this bull had like third a harem of thirty cows and it was simple like it was yesterday morning when wei went down there and it's not quite right there but was a reverb ways but a lot of fog of the sun had just come over the hill forward that elka crossing back over to the to the forest unfortunately this bull pause for one second or two seconds to bugle to challenge another welcome and the other thing is serendipitous fortunately for this little bit of a fog stands out but there's the splash of color his gesture it is very important but again the mood that I tried to get and it was talked aboutthe so that's what that was kind of way figured by this morning but I like five years trying to get that way this morning of dropping anti climatic so anyway that's uh part of the gallery part the images and I've got some people downstairs a very good sign your books this is a woman I was telling you about oh your friend from columbia she has more than a hundred it's lover that I have played one hundred or one hundred to something like that I've lost the images in her house on seymour images this office with your husband dick's office one hundred and it looks much better than me because she had everything framed fruit specifically for her taste without taking away from the imagery she respected the images thank you colors but she has a number of bedrooms the large house obviously beautiful all white walls looks like a friggin museum you have how long you've been collecting for probably since nineteen eighty nineteen eighty one of my longest seventy nine or eighty I think it was seventy nine when I first saw your things but I didn't buy anything till nineteen eighty what took you so oh I don't know I didn't meet you that that was the problem you know I told you once that I tried to help myself get to sleep you know some people count sheep I decided I was gonna count mangles so in my mind with my eyes closed I'm going from room to room counting the mangles is on the wall but it turned out that it made me stay more awake because I know I missed one I have to go back to that room and sort of never coming out didn't you but it didn't help me sleep I have one for you tonight I think oh okay you have some new things you're gonna unveil it okay thanks love you're gonna do it up right yeah there yung lean's great care elsa sweetie you're so shy it's sonny you're going to get the first copy well oh what am I gonna say to you guys that way that's the first one thanks for your help on it thanks sonny you guys made its way got a few new images and way haven't shown him yet so I thought we just open unveil him so it was not big deal just some news but I used to be over in a square here great across the street in nineteen seventy eight when I did mine veiling on little easels in the craft fairs and art fairs in july and then they all got blown over and broken or it rained so it's nice to be inside especially today because it's been raining all day so I'm unfortunate to have good people like you uh collecting my work and appreciate it and coming in drinking my free wine I know that's why you're here oh oh this is this this is where we shot about two weeks ago we're in along the cat my coast is a female uh I'm sorry so yes four people in the background you can see anything um we were photographing brown bears in alaska we go there pretty much every year to alaska and about every other year to photograph uh bears and this is salmon stream um on the coast of katmai and this mother had uh two young cubs and she caught this beautiful salmon and uh there's another male in the background that she was worried about male sometimes will kill to get the young cubs and which forces the female back into estrus and you know males like to pass on their own genes and all that stupid stuff we do but anyway she caught this sam and she looked up she stood up on the big board behind me shows she looked up to see where it was to protect its its prize and then she ran off to the cubs and then they ran off into the woods and ate the salmon so that's it that's a simple story okay but what I what I like about this excuse me what it is just this moment you know the icon you know obviously you know this is a wild beast and but the waters is a go to thousands of a second shutter speed for those photography freak owes that air here but that that swirl of the water and that you know these huge long huge pause but that you know that moment that's a kind of thing that I try to capture my goal and I don't do it often up but once a while I would get lucky all right number three oh this is the big board she was worried about actually he was about a uh oh a thousand pounder and he would just snorkel snorkel for fish in his body weight he would rush these these holes along the the little islands so he would rush uh the salmon and push him up into the shallows because he was so huge use even bigger than me and and then so I saw this black background and I knew and I loved backlit stuff and always gets when they get really wet when they get out they will eventually shake so I know that from experience of many years photographing bears and so I just I love the black background I thought okay he's going to shake so all this other stuff is going on upstream the mother that you just saw and so I was back in for those folks that him and I went to her and this has taken the same day within the twenty thirty minutes and anyway just stuck his head up but he was snorkel like like snorkeling and he did russia a fishing pop up so then he turned around and sugars head and again very fast shutter speed about to thousands of a second and I just like the you know the swirling water so he's a big boy so we had a fund that was a fun trip okay is it it okay well thank you guys

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Last Great Wild Places
Adorama Gear Guide
Elk in the Willows
Elk River Crossing
Lighting at Magic Hour

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

There is probably just one word that comes closest to describing Tom Mangelsen’s photography. Glorious. There are other good words too, of course. And they are also inadequate. Mangelsen’s panoramas are (cumulatively and separately (any one of them)) the best I’ve seen. Mangelsen teaches by example and his examples are exemplary. I’ve seen several photographers giving courses on CreativeLive lately many of whose photos I would love to have taken - but with Mangelsen I envy his possession not just of his photos but of their subjects too. And he does possess his subjects in ways many outstanding photographers fail to - possesses them and then leaves them to continue on with their lives. There are other reasons I’m grateful for this course too - his field trips and critiques have shown me (as with other CreativeLive courses) just how lazy I’m being with my work. And if his critiques aren’t motivation enough I only have to view his slide show ‘Last Great Wild Places’ for more inspiration. The photos in this series are revelations all on their own - even without commentary. Thank you CreativeLive for continuing to bring us the finest wildlife and nature photographers at work today - and thank you to photographers like Tom Mangelsen for giving us a look at the way they work.

user-5a9732
 

I could not stop watching this class and set aside time each day until I finished it. I guess you could saw that I binge watched it. Then I was really sad when it was finished! Like a good movie that stays with you and that you don't want to end! This is a wonderful class and the best I have taken at CreativeLive. I learned so much and have a great fondness for Tom Mangelsen. He really knows how to pull you into his passion. I am so grateful to have taken this course and grateful to Tom for all that he has done in his career to further his craft and to share it. I am inspired! If you are going to purchase and course from CreativeLive, this is one to be sure to take!!! Thank you again.

Dub Maitland
 

Excellent class! An incredibly talented photographer who has a vast knowledge of the subject matter as well as an outstanding ability to deliver the information. It was as enjoyable as it was informative. I first saw Tom's work in an office in Denver in 1991 and have been inspired by him ever since. Thank you Creative Live, for giving us the opportunity to spend this time with the Master! And thank you Tom for your willingness to share your talent with us! Dub Maitland, Missoula, MT.

Student Work

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