Barry Bonds, the American baseball player, holds the sport's greatest record—hitting more home runs than any other slugger in history.  But the former star athlete will forever be tarnished with an asterisk beside his name.

The reason is that Bonds stands accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, which purists say is cheating.  To herald him, critics say, cheapens the toil and achievement of his predecessors who tallied remarkable statistics based on natural talent alone.

Within the ranks of professional wildlife photography, there is a parallel principle in play. This one involves the ethical question of paying for animal models at commercial game farms to enhance one's portfolio of images.

Thomas D. Mangelsen, who makes his home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is a renowned photographer who will never have an asterisk beside his name. A purist, he is one of the few in the business who has never relied on game farms.  He is old school and has amassed his body of work the hard way: Being out in the wilds and waiting patiently for the perfect moment.

Mangelsen should be celebrated for his feat and yet there are some in his profession who wish he would go away.  Consider:  Mangelsen's work is featured in 16 Images of Nature galleries across the U.S. and in four books: Images of Nature: The Photographs of Thomas D. Mangelsen, now in its twelfth printing; Polar Dance: Born of the North Wind; Spirit of the Rockies: The Mountain Lions of Jackson Hole; and The Natural World.  As a former BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year winner, he also is a charter member of the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA) and a founding member of the International League of Conservation Photographers.  He has earned the right to have a say and be heard.

Mangelsen is credited with capturing many iconic images in nature photography, the most famous being his pictures of hungry brown bears in the rapids of an Alaskan stream, waiting as leaping spawning salmon fly toward their gaping jaws.  He attributes his success to patience, becoming skilled in understanding the nuances of animal behavior,always being aware of fast-changing ambient light, enduring many, many days of disappointment, learning from missed opportunity, and no small amount of luck.

Mangelsen's beef with game farms isn't merely that they allow some shooters to take short cuts, and buy their way to remarkable profit. He says it should matter if a bear or lion or wolf is a wild animal or if it is,instead, merely responding to a game trainer, not seen in the picture frame, who is giving the animal treats to strike the majestic pose.

Foremost, Mangelsen worries about the welfare of captive animals. He knows that generations of artists have gone to zoos to study animals and hone their grasp of the animal figure. That isn't what he's talking about here.

He calls it a deception that some photographers pass off their pictures as images gainfully gotten by paying their dues in the wild and don't mention the images came by enlisting a game farm operator to present the animals in pose.

At the very least, he believes in mandating full disclosure, letting viewers know, through photo captions, where and how the pictures were taken and then letting them judge the merits of the images.

The problem, Mangelsen notes, is that the public generally doesn't know when they see a pretty picture in a magazine that the subject isn't wild, something many nature photographers don't like to admit.

Read Mangelsen's essay, "My Problems With Canned Wildlife Photography " in Wildlife Art Journal and then let us know what you think. We stand behind what we said earlier.  You may disagree with Tom Mangelsen over game farms but it shouldn't stop you from admiring the way he champions a standard that is both difficult to reach and elevates the art form higher.