© "Montana Outdoors" Recommended Reading: Nov/Dec 2008
It's impossible to convey the sweeping immensity of a Montana landscape with a single photograph. So Bozeman photographer Craig W. Hergert takes several and pastes them together with a computer program to create unparalleled panoramic scenes. In this new collectors edition, Hergert compiles 114 of his most impressive images of wilderness areas, prairies, cityscapes, and historic sites taken over the past decade. Viewing his 180-plus degree panoramas is as close as you can get to actually visiting scenic places such as the Bridger Range, Paradise Valley, and Lee Metcalf Wilderness. Hergert's ability to capture and highlight the diversity and grandiosity of landscapes makes the average Montana postcard look like a Kodak Instamatic snapshot.

Outside Bozeman Spring 2008 ©Mike England
Montana photography books are like architects—shake a tree around Bozeman and five will fall out. But like architects, not all photo books are created equal. Take Montana Panoramic (Great Wide Open Publishing; $75), a new collection of images by local photographer Craig Hergert. This book is truly in a league of it’s own, and it’s not just the impeccable esthetics of the gold-foil-stamped, black-linen-covered book itself. Inside this weighty, oversized volume, 130 stunning panoramic images from around Montana capture a perspective and field of view that is utterly unique.

Instead of merely imparting a place in time, as most photos do, Hergert’s panoramics seem to capture the entirety of a scene, from subtle differences in topography and color to holistic form and totality of detail. The result is a more comprehensive engagement of the mind, and a more visceral aesthetic response. When you see an image in Montana Panoramic of a place you’ve been, if only once and years ago, you recognize it immediately. The book may be spendy, but like most things of quality, you get what you pay for (this magazine being the notable exception). Pick up a copy at local bookstores, or purchase one online at www.MontanaPanoramic.com

©The Missoulian: Outdoors Section: Thursday, February 28th, 2008

Wide angle - Bozeman photographer publishes book of Montana panoramas
By MICHAEL MOORE of the Missoulian/Photographs by Craig Hergert
Finley Point, view from Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness, Flathead Lake, 2006

Craig Hergert first picked up a camera as a way to improve his painting. 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. He started carrying the camera as a form of memory, a way to meld his mind’s eye with what he’d actually seen on his journeys around the state and Yellowstone National Park.

“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. “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.

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.”