Main Street, Wyoming; 602; Tom Mangelsen

Main Street Wyoming is made possible by Kennicott energy company proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the coal and uranium industries which includes exploration mining and production. And the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching the lives of Wyoming people through their study of Wyoming history values and ideas. All of us who call Wyoming home have our favorite places favorite seasons favorite memories when the lighting was just right and we were lucky enough to witness an eagle or a swan and see it magically appear. Tom Hanks and Jackson has devoted his life to capturing those moments for all of us. Join us on mainstreet Wyoming to meet and see the work of one of America's premier nature photographers Tom angle thing. And. Coming often spends about eight months of the year in remote areas photographing the world's

wildlife in their natural habitats. His work has been published in National Geographic Smithsonian Audubon National Wildlife and wildlife art news and his cinematography has appeared in National Geographic PBS and BBC specials. He's exhibited his work internationally published many books produces limited edition prints and conducts photography workshops. I'm Deborah Hammond and on Main Street Wyoming we are honored to have as our guest. Tom you spent eight months of the year on the road. That's not all at one time is it. Maybe just a weekend it may be six weeks or seven weeks but you don't go for more than three weeks three to four weeks is a long time to be in this field. What might dictate your schedule on new seasons and the animals in the part of the world you're going to have to do with animals or birds that have always wanted to photograph that's in Africa. You want to go there and maybe there will be some migration is that so the Eagles want to go when the salmon are running in Alaska. Well maybe it's

Yellowstone Park when they're reading a bugle. And when you're at the prime you know the birds are prime and spray time and animals are in their prime in the stall usually. So somewhere in the world there is something that you can be out doing a lot of things but in many places and many things going on there's just not enough time to give our viewers some feeling for the breadth of the kinds of pictures you've taken before we get to the pictures you've taken in Wyoming. I want to go to that series of pictures that you've taken in the Arctic. Can you tell me about this now you've taken all these pictures of polar bears. This first one I want to look at. We have that the polar bears. They always seem to be more than than one of them you always have several of them in a in a picture do polar bears normally hang out in groups and not usually except for this time of year which is in the October November when they're waiting for the ice to freeze my polar bear pictures are taken near Churchill

Manitoba. At that time of year they all gather around Cape Churchill point of land it goes out into a and a sort of meeting place and they literally just wait a month or so for the ice to freeze and they go out on the ice and catch seals. So doing that tender quite sociable the rest of the year they're quite. QUESTION Well Terry what kind of situations does this give you know this particular one that mother and her cubs look at the lighting in that. What kind of day would you have taken there were it was late afternoon probably about three o'clock in the afternoon that time of year the sun sets around 4:30 or 5:00 so this would be maybe you know a half hour or hour before before sunset. What kind of circumstances like in pictures like this how close are you physically to the polar bears. Well nearly all the polar bear pictures at least that time of year we go out in these big tundra baby these old train where they're basically old school bus tops and dump truck frames

and four wheel drive. Transmissions that are built by a guy up there sort of a custom thing but this is the size of a school bus for the most part. Now you said we. How many people really anywhere from a group gets larger and larger every year but it's commercial and venture for the most part because it's a fairly expensive ship so people you know a dozen people to maybe up to 30 people will go on on this trip but there may be just two or three of us depending on the last couple years I'm working on a film about polar bears so we rented other vehicles for ourselves but now this particular picture of it has a title. Bad boys at the Arctic are doing the titling of your word. Well I title most of the images there are a few that we sort of have contests at receptions open houses we haven't and they should come up with a good one for this this one was actually titled Where's the remote this remote control in. Where is the beer and that kind of thing and serious counts but

it was another title but it only came up in the bad times magnificent You can feel the wind blowing. This is called wind song. Yes that was another one that I titled it was you know the wind was almost a white out condition with 30 40 foot Tamar winds blowing across the the bay and the bears were lying in the snow for a couple hours in these two big males who also got up and started play fighting and sort of mouthing like a couple big Labrador dogs and and oh how do you protect your equipment where they're like well you have to keep it dry which is the hardest thing and keep fresh batteries which is you know the only thing that usually goes wrong with a chemical because of the batteries get drained very quickly because this is probably 40 50 below zero. Wind chill may be higher than that. So batteries don't last very long. And how do you dress for it just as if you were part of the expedition. A lot of down clothing two or three sets of long underwear have big heavy gloves mittens and lighter weight clothes you can maneuver the equipment

and. Parkas the partners with you to look like the Michelin Man when you get out there and not be moving your fingers and that has to be incredible. You know what I want to show the other extreme you also have some pictures from Africa. Now what was the climate like when you were there for some of the direct opposite obviously of the earthquake it's warm and it probably gets up to 100 degrees in the day time and space lot easier to pack for clothing wise a couple pairs of shorts if you two shirts and lightweight long sleeved shirts or you know I mean where would you have taken this is it intends in the in the Serengeti place called Girl copies which is a great rock to jet out of the flat plains and she does like to get up on the copies and and use it for look up post for Thompson's because it was or will be with sugar.

I mean pretty animals when you when you have an animal like that that it is on the lookout how far away do you have to be to take a shot. So you just threw a shot with a 60 millimeter telephoto lens. So for a long lens it varies you know from being very close to quite far but I use a lot of long lenses in my work. Do you have favorite animals that you've taken pictures of are there some that you feel like you understand better like when or if it's been about seven or eight years of polar bear so I understand the polar bears fairly well or at least I know where to be positioned myself hopefully it's for a good photograph. But polar bears are the big cats leopards and cheetahs and and lions in Africa and cranes are my favorite overall bird so now these particular cranes but kind are these these are Crown cranes. I did a lot of work on cranes and in Nebraska center Cranston hooping cranes and and these were sub spectacular bird with these big. Topknot look like crowns or golden crowns or see them in a certain light they just

glow. Now I should explain to our viewers as they're looking at this that television has a different format and cameras have the power still photography and so everything that we're showing is in a three by four up format which means that some of your wonderful pictures we can include all of it so if they really want to see them for themselves are going to have to go to your gallery in Jackson night. You grew up in Nebraska and what I've read is that that you used to go duck and goose hunting with your father which there are plenty of people in Wyoming that do that. Were you always fascinated with the animals or just being outside. Yeah I was going with that I think probably most boys like to go with her in the field and he like to hunt rabbits and quail and pheasants and so he was quite the kind of the. Toy old school goose Hunter Nebraska. I went with him from the time I was two years old. Tell us a few years ago but I learned a lot from him about the river

as well AC and just watching it for the most part but we sure had a lot of challenges trying to trying to hunt geese. Now this particular picture of Sandhill Cranes would have been from a part of Nebraska that you were you were from. Right this is from we have a cabin there between Grand Island and Carney Nebraska just south central Nebraska and I was working on a film on center cranes and this is I would also take my still camera whenever it's something that was special and I would shoot some still pictures and this is just a few miles south of work so it's in the river. How long have you lived in Jackson. About 16 years. Wow that's a long time. But you take an awful lot of a lot of your work now you do around in the Jackson and the Yellowstone area. Yeah when I can but it's sort of backyard syndrome. Whenever you're I travel so much when I come home I have a lot of you know business work to do and things to catch up on mail and things like that. So it's. Should I get out there but when I'm traveling away if I come back I don't

have time unfortunately a lot of times to do the backyard stuff but when I saw down them I spend more time at home right about I absolutely love these pictures that you have of that the Bohemian wax wings writing to take down those who are up in Montana or the south of Glacier Park I was up there photographing Eagles a few years ago and it was bitter cold is right around Thanksgiving time and I was actually on my way home and I saw these were actually fly across the road and going to these very trees and there are about 3000 waxwings And and there's just an incredible sight and there's you know a couple hundred birds in one tree that just stripped these trees the berries and maybe five minutes and then fly off and go to another one. There look at that tree with all the right from me the artistry in looking at what you do it's not only what you capture in the field and the lighting and those moments in the framing and everything but but how much of it is the actual work that you do in the darkroom do you do that.

Work with several different custom while others have with their wives and you test prints of the images and they are too dark to light. You know they can do a kind of Muppet I don't manipulate the pictures for the most part you know sometimes you might want to crop them a little narrower or that kind of thing but I work with a lattice but it is so time consuming that people are doing real experts and artists and what they do so I trust them more times too. Well here we have we see a lot of those in Wyoming. You know this is for me a horror. You know I spent pretty much the day with pelicans who were drifting down to the Yellowstone River and they would get down so far. If you're fishing and you fly back up to where I was and drift down so I picked a spot kind of midway and that's how we get there getting down and flying past them. When you're in your bird photographs have you found that there are better times of the day in terms of of trying to get what you want to get some mammoth photographs pretty much animals are active in the early morning and late afternoon. And that's also when the light is the best so if it's a cloudy day and want to be active

throughout the day. But for the most part it's early morning and late afternoon shooting. Now I know you did some of your did your undergraduate work with studying wildlife and did graduate studies in zoology hoping to pursue that as a career. What happened at what point did you decide you didn't want to deal just with wildlife and you wanted to take your picture. I really just want to go I think was I didn't realize this until a publishing year in college that I wanted to work with wildlife and that usually takes the form of being a park ranger or doing research and and those are always difficult jobs to get number one and number two the government jobs which if you had a choice you want to probably not work for the government. And so I met a friend no matter the time I was doing wildlife films and he needed a camera man and I've never shot film but he said if you can shoot still wishing to Jody's the movie cameras save him his movie camera. I worked for him for about four years and then I started doing more stills.

Now this particular shot everybody in the world kept after all of the national and international conferences we've had in Jackson everyone should know exactly where you took this picture. What time of day with dad. You know this is early morning the sun is just just lighting the Tetons I saw these geese just sitting in one of the hay fields just south of Marin in Teton park and every day every morning to fly out to the fields from the river they were roosting on river at night and in the evening they would go back to the river and Rousseau every morning before sunrise and go there and sort of find the spot where they could hopefully get the Tetons and the geese crossing and at night I'd go back and just do the opposite. So I was there for about I want to do about 10 days in a row you know and you know Finally one morning that the light you geesey everything kind of came together. That's the most telling story I mean everybody says oh you know I should be there in the morning should I be in the afternoon. No you should be there for several weeks. So most of it's a matter of taking the time and having the patience and

anticipating behavior and learning enough about animals to place yourself where they're going to be and place yourself very specifically as to background. Do. You know what kind of image you will get if the damn animal walks into the background. So that particular moment in front of the Tetons you knew the gates would be coming by the way you knew you wanted the Tetons and have particular configuration. So it's a lot of a lot of planning but knowledgeable about this that came from expansion expansion I was in seminary to do so so I know everything you know every night you go out and see what they want you out there and you know exactly. Now with a lot of the pictures that you've taken in Wyoming you have such a variety between large animals and small animals but some of them that I look at I kind of wonder. For example Buffalo how close physically that you are to them when you're in Yellowstone. I guess it's because I grew up close to through my place and were told never to be close to Buffalo. Well that both this one obviously there is a lot of this is a landscape pictures

mostly concerned about the wait in the dark clouds. In the river in the coal or in the water and the fact that the bison was there was just a nice touch. Surely it's a book about the bison is more about the landscape and I think if you can do a picture of the landscape without the animal and it still strong then that's that's fine that's great and if you have an animal like that. The same with these three bison here on the hillside. There could be a very graphic image of a hillside again some nice clothes and and beautiful back like kind of the storm coming from coming in from the west there. But the three Basin obviously on the ridge there makes it makes it more special in the shadows and things. Well the situation here where you were you driving around and you just stopped there and waited for them to come on snowmachines was in January again very cold. So the basin a couple basin kind of over the hill and two or three buses sort of heading up the ridge and we sat there for maybe an hour and a half waiting for the

three bison to get in that position they were down below feeding and I saw some other ones up on top trying to get good at the grass said the premiss going along the snow free and I saw tracks going up there so I know that the ones in the bomb would probably go up there and just really waited for it. To answer a question about how closely did you know I don't want to get too close to the bison. This one here was was actually walking down the road the bison in Yellowstone this bullshit will know they go there where time we are using that the roads are plowed is basically their trail so if you can park your snow machine somebody you know walk within you know eight or 10 or 15 feet of you not really much you can do about getting out of their way. But Joe you don't want to push bison very closely because they can kill more people than anything in Yellowstone this now this one you can't see the start of the hair but it's cold only in winter it's great it's just a magnificent profile. Yeah those are good they're there they're hard to see your eyes because your eyes are quite small compared to the

body and this bill had been standing in the hot springs the night he got all frost on his face. Not in this particular shot this is quite different from other photos of him with a young girl was this the way that it looked you know looked exactly like that actually in the shot directly into the sun the sun is just coming over the hill and illuminating the Bisons breath and the fog coming off the Yellowstone River and sort of the the mist in the dew that's on on the sage brush and all I wanted was just a sort of a golden profile. And I tend to show a lot of backlit in me just because I think the more dramatic than in front but when you know that you've been involved in there's been over 20 years. Have you changed a lot during those 20 years. There hope so. I think I think I have sure I used to shoot more sort of trophy shots you know the good thing getting the ball OK out of the biggest biggest hail or deer

or you know the water you know the water I started photographing water polo the sort of the crosshairs photography kind of thing. Ducks and geese shot back with a lot more landscape with animals and more behavior stuff than I did when I was younger. I love this shot of them now that they actually were taken right near my woodpile where I live near moose and the term that goes under my woodpile catches country mice and Greg gets a ground squirrels that are dormant so if I want to put it this way then yours Wyoming's creature. Yeah it's a beautiful earth female Kay I saw in Yellowstone the last of the park was open and snowed heavily and there was very little traffic and and it was just warning through the woods and followed it for 3 or 4 hours and it took a number of decent images but this is my favorite one. Now when you said you are you know it was him or the other snowshoe.

The smell was in deep enough you know that time it was only with 18 you know foot 18 inches deep but they could still walk with just snow boots. You know a lot of the coyotes and it was sort of fairly true between him and say you know if you pushed in the not too aggressive just kind of follow you let them know you're there. You know let's get really close. Now how did you get a shot like this is a porcupine porcupine that I saw and near him to dump a question it was just a small bush towards the march I guess late March. Was stripping the bark off. So was this really bush and it was only about ten foot tall so I just slowly walked over there pretty plain kind of looked at me in the shadows of a 300 millimeter lens so it's really close as a portrait and I just want to get ahead in the face of the party. So that is a lifetime of being used to being around animals and how quickly you move and you know you know it's amazing. What about the ones that get away that's what you know I don't want to talk about you want to talk about what it's going to be plenty to eat now

that to me looks so much like a painting and that's what I was fascinated with the chair and the bear stands out in your pictures the colors are so real and I love your pictures. Yeah I love the colors of fall and certainly Like I said earlier they the man was look the best in us all because they're putting on the satin have the winter hair band here pretty much and the spirit killed where it found a carcass of a deer approver and it was sort of the walk you'd walk away from it and come back it was kind of protecting and they were supposed to drag it out of the out of the river. Now what would you do You were talking about you know like you'd like to have it backlit. What about a situation like this where do you walk how do you get the sheriff that you know sometimes it was a bear. It was pretty much stuck on the other side of the river and that was a pretty much a front live shot sometimes you have the opportunity to change business positions. This picture was taken

place called Allen Creek which is in the Hidden Valley in the Elk usually don't go out into the water to feed but this one morning after it rained all night there was a half dozen broken pointed out there to shoot on the new vegetation which sure was sprouting up and it goes in late late June early July. And so that made a very misty moody kind of scene and different than what this is more of a typical picture is when your trophy. That's one of the trophy I think that's going to have a couple of minutes now time wise what's the difference between those two pictures do remember where one was and where you are. OK we were taken in June or early July and this was taken in late October the same time that the coyote picture was taken. So you know I was pretty different images you know there's a very moody summer picture and this is kind of the beginning of winter and this is it again early summer picture taken within a week or so that either one of these it appears that you know some people what you bring to your photography is a real

artistry. Do you study other people's works or does it just all come from you being out in a few you know there are you influenced by other things. Oh sure. I love art I love all kinds of art. Sort of like other certain other wildlife artists and inspire me. Robert Bateman is a real inspiration to Canadian artists to hear Max thank you. Yeah he has a real way of composition and singing and it was about animals differently in his artwork and so people like that I respect a lot and certainly are a big influence on me. What about those special pictures. How many pictures would you have taken at that one. Sometimes I take rolls and rolls and rolls of this particular picture as you know I shot it maybe half a dozen images before the light changes and cause changes right after maybe 20 30 minutes after sunrise.

Again very close to where the mist was I tend to go back to places that are good to me I guess and that's dead on the opposite side of the river there but. This one and it's that you can see every flake of snow that's coming down in this particular. How did it happen this Glacier Park Glacier National Park in Montana and egos were congregating on the river there called McDonald creek it was a Kokanee salmon run and there's only one large spruce tree in this mile section of rivers so that there's actually a vertical picture which has another 20 goals in it so it was their main perch where they would look out for fish that were responding and they would launch themselves off that tree so the tree was just filled with with eagles. And typically this particular picture you were chosen by the BBC in 1994 as wildlife photographer this was

your award winning photograph. You were telling me there was something right one thousand entrants you know interns think 50 50 countries or something. That's magnificent Where did you take this this isn't the end of the season no frozen wind blowing across your frozen eye. Does that does the ice freeze like that in waves. Yeah because you know the time and the wind. So it's not a real you know a break and take comes in and then when the winds blow that water freezes not really evenly. Now here's something of the much closer this looks like you're entirely too close to this particular picture of the 600 millimeters there was a fair distance it was a female I'd watch for a couple weeks do you know. Gross and this is probably my best action. Rare moment shot of anything I've done because it's not very common to be able to catch a

grown score running from a grizzly bear. And this is the last frame on my film and most of the frames are focused very well so. So I would think that would be the hard part when you're getting excited that you know that this is the critical moment where I didn't know what I just ran out of film. And that was the last one and this one this is your catch of the day. How did that moment happen. And like the bit with the school picture of the salmon and bears are fairly fairly common comparatively but but I had seen pictures of this area in Alaska called Kemah National Park and and I figured I'd been done before but he said just to go there and pretty much photographed the head and shoulders of the bear hopefully catching a salmon like this and so I spent a week from morning till told evening just working this color and pretty much just shooting and shooting that that image and you knew you wanted this painting I wanted I had no idea I had actually gotten into it got home a few weeks later and saw the film

but that's what I want for I don't usually quite that specific but I was lucky there. And this picture how everything you know ask where the girls come to feed on salmon and and I'm working on a book on going Eagles eventually probably three years or so and so I spend a lot of time photographing Eagles and. Birds of flight are most probably the most fun thing to do. Yes the light was perfect it just came together. You can see every single thing that's making you sad. You know Tom it's been such a pleasure to meet you in person. But I want to thank you for trying to find the beauty you know the world and sharing it with all of us. And thank you for joining all of us on Main Street where you. Main Street Wyoming is made possible by Kennicott energy company proud to be

a part of Wyoming's future in the coal and uranium industries which includes exploration mining and production and the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching the lives of Wyoming people through their study of Wyoming history Bal use and ideas.