He studied visual communication – a combination of photography, marketing, and visual philosophy – at New York University, and graduated in 2008. Stangel primarily shoots medium and large format, and prefers using the sun as his light source and the clouds as his light diffusion. He recently completed his first major photographic project, “Transamerica”, which looks into the vivid and thoroughly American world that still exists along the backroads of the United States. The project was conceived and shot on two separate cross-country bicycle trips Stangel took in 2007 and 2008. He is currently working on a self-published book of writing and photography from “Transamerica”. He also runs a photo resource website called ‘too much chocolate‘.