Now he’s published a coffee-table book of gorgeous panoramic pictures from around Montana. But the book is a long way from Hergert’s first ventures into art.
A painter, that’s how he saw himself. He’d come to Montana State University from New Mexico 15 years ago to study fine arts, as well as graphic design and marketing.
“Growing up in New Mexico, I’d seen a lot of Southwestern landscapes, Georgia O’Keefe-type things, and I felt like there was something for me in that,” the 33-year-old Hergert said recently.
Hergert, who now lives in Bozeman with his wife and young son, took a handful of jobs after college, working for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and Big R Stores.
It was at the Chronicle that he developed an understanding of what was possible in the rapidly transforming world of digital photography.
“I got a lot of help from the pros at the Chronicle, and it was there when I started to think that maybe there was something in photography for me,” Hergert said.
In particular, he started seeing a similarity between landscapes he saw himself painting and photographs he found himself taking.
“What I also saw was that it was likely that I was a better photographer than I was a painter,” he said. “It’s not really a bad thing to discover the thing you’re good at, even when it comes at the expense of a way that you used to see yourself.”
Slowly, Hergert began to evolve a career as a freelance photographer. He did all sorts of work, whatever paid the bills. Real estate, architecture, construction shots, anything to pay the rent.
At the same time, though, he was shooting landscapes across the state, learning incrementally about digital processing and methods for making the richest, most vibrant prints.
“I wanted to find a way to make the pictures feel like paintings, but I didn’t want to be too manipulative,” he said.
Eventually, Hergert found himself drawn to wide-format panoramic pictures, with heavily saturated colors that made darks more dense and colors more explosive.
Buffalo Bridge, Falthead River, Polson, 2006
“It’s partly the painting background, trying to render the picture the way it feels in my mind,”?he said.
Hergert made his photos by shooting eight to 15 shots of a given landscape, working left to right. Then, on the computer, he assembled the pictures into a larger, single image that represented the panoramic view he saw in the field.
As Hergert’s technique grew more polished, he found himself selling art prints through his gallery in the Emerson Cultural Center in Bozeman.
“A lot of my customers are people who lived in Montana and who have moved away,” he said. “They want something to remember the state by. But I’ve also found people who are looking to put some photographs in their second homes, like a place at Flathead Lake or something.”
That work has led to posters and some very large prints, including a 4-by-18 foot whopper.
Irvine Flats, Mission Range, Polson, 2006
The idea for a book, Hergert said, was really “just an effort to take my work to the next level.”
He shopped the book around to some publishers, but didn’t care for the way the economic equation worked out. So he published the book, “Montana Panoramic,” himself, at considerable expense.
He’s selling it the same way, going door to door to get it stocked in all sorts of shops and stores, all the while selling it on his Web site.
At $75, the book is not inexpensive, but it’s in line with similar coffee-table books, and the reproduction of Hergert’s prints is excellent.
The work itself is also excellent. If you’ve traveled at all in Montana, you’ll likely find a picture that plucks the chords of memory.
Hergert arranged the book by 12 geographic regions, and there’s something for everyone, from fans of remote peaks to those who favor the rolling prairies of eastern Montana.
“For me, I wanted to have some of my favorite places, but I also wanted it to resonate for other Montanans, so I went after some of the iconic places,” Hergert said. “I just wanted it to feel like Montana for people.”
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or by e-mail at mmoore@missoulian.com.
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