When Thomas D. Mangelsen started experimenting with the panoramic format, he began to approach the making of wildlife and landscape scenes in a more “painterly” way. And indeed, for many collectors, his panoramics have become the most coveted on the wall, literally enhancing the ambiance of entire rooms by giving them focal points that feel larger than life.
A Change of Seasons, capturing a moose leading our eyes into layers of banded color, has earned comparisons to paintings by Carl Rungius, the greatest painter of North American megafauna. Viewers often have the sensation of shifting light and the advance of a new season.
“When I decided to commit myself to mastering the panoramic camera, it was as if I had suddenly been handed a bigger canvas and an opportunity to expand my thinking about color and light,” Mangelsen says. “But photography is not really about trying to cram more detail in; it is knowing what to leave out when framing the composition. Still, in the case of a spellbinding landscape, with a gigantic bull moose, less is not more. More is more.”
A Change of Seasons, capturing a moose leading our eyes into layers of banded color, has earned comparisons to paintings by Carl Rungius, the greatest painter of North American megafauna. Viewers often have the sensation of shifting light and the advance of a new season.
“When I decided to commit myself to mastering the panoramic camera, it was as if I had suddenly been handed a bigger canvas and an opportunity to expand my thinking about color and light,” Mangelsen says. “But photography is not really about trying to cram more detail in; it is knowing what to leave out when framing the composition. Still, in the case of a spellbinding landscape, with a gigantic bull moose, less is not more. More is more.”
