Tom's powerful images are the result of planning, preparation and patience. "Most people today don't take the time to understand animal behavior," he has said. In fact, many amateurs and professionals rely on the shortcut of photographing at game farms, where captive animals are trained to perform for the camera. "I'm not critical of zoos and rehabilitation centers," Tom has said. "They exist for something other than photography; photography is done there, but it's not the reason for their existence, so those places have some validity. [But] game farms exist only for photography and have no validity beyond photography, and I think that keeping animals in captivity just for photography is unethical."

To get his photographs, he goes to where the wild creatures are, and that's where planning and preparation come into play. "Certain things I plan a year in advance, and certain things I do every year," Tom says. "I go back to Nebraska to photograph cranes on the Platte because that's where I grew up, and I love cranes and I love being there." He usually plans an annual Africa trip to explore new territory or revisit particular animals—gorillas in Rwanda, for example. "I wanted to spend more time and get more pictures because they're such an endangered species. Who knows—Rwanda is so tentative politically, it's a place I might not be able to go to in five or ten years—or even next year."

When you photograph truly wild animals, you need to know as much about them and their habits as possible. "I often go to Africa in the dry season because all the animals are at the water holes. You can't go during our winter because it's the wet season there, and the animals will be dispersed."

But nature is unpredictable, so spontaneity is also important. "Three weeks ago there was an unprecedented great gray owl migration out of southern Canada into Minnesota. There's a migration every ten years because the mouse and vole population crash, so the owls will go south maybe a hundred or two hundred miles to search for mice and voles. But this particular year not only did the mouse and vole population crash in southern Canada, but on top of that there was a lot of ice and snowstorms that covered the woods and prairie, so the owls had to go south. Maybe 1,500 or 2,000 owls headed south which was unprecedented. That was something I hadn't planned on. I heard about it, did some research and packed my bags the next day and left."

At the time we spoke, Tom was about to head to Arizona. "They've had a huge amount of rain in the deserts, more than they've had in years, and expectation is that the desert flowers will bloom like they've never bloomed before—at least in the last hundred years. I wasn't planning on photographing desert wildflowers this year, but because of the weather conditions I'm changing my schedule.

"It's a moving target," Tom adds, "and you've got to be as flexible as you can be or you'll miss once-in-a-lifetime opportunities." Everything, though, is tempered by his concern for the landscape and the wildlife. "The best photographers, like the best people who spend time outdoors skiing or hiking or bird watching, accept the responsibility of taking care of the environment."

To see more of Tom's photography visit his website at http://www.mangelsen.com.

Thomas D. Mangelsen has been an NPS member since 1981.