The sun is fading over the Rocky Mountains on a late winter Friday afternoon in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Tom Mangelsen, a powerful man in his mid-50s, is tucked away in his downtown studio, surrounded by 2,500 boxes of film he has shot and developed in the past few years but not yet had time to review. With his whirlwind schedule this spring and summer, he's unlikely to catch up anytime soon.

By the end of June, he'll have released a new catalog, published a new book and opened his thirteenth Images of Nature photo gallery, this time in Kirkland, Wash. He'll miss the late April opening gala, however. That week he'll be spending his evenings huddling in a bamboo thicket...