Andy Austin vividly remembers the first photo he ever staged.   

He grew up in a small neighborhood outside Billings. While the 34-year-old’s childhood neighborhood is now surrounded by a sea of new ones, it was once nothing but dirt.  

“We were just out there building jumps and doing stupid stuff,” he recalled. He and his friends had free rein to wreak havoc, especially when their parents left for work during the summer. 

 “There weren’t a lot of rules,” he remembered.  

Austin recorded his friends’ antics on an old Canon camera he got from his father. “I grew up with a camera in my hand,” he said.  

While he typically took candid shots, one time he decided to orchestrate one himself. “To my buddy I was like, ‘Hey, let’s fake a bike crash,” he recalled.  

His friend lay on the ground with a bike draped over him, “and then we just covered him in ketchup,” he laughed. “I’m sure his parents loved that he came home just covered in ketchup.”  

Even now, Austin still has a camera in his hand, working as a professional adventure and outdoor photographer for over 10 years.  

An affinity for documenting paths less traveled has brought him across the world to all seven continents and around 50 countries.  

He has even visited all 56 counties of his home state, which he sets out to showcase the hidden beauty of in his recently released photo book called, “MONTANA: Photographs from the Last Best Place.” 

Austin announced the book’s release on April 6, also known as Montana Day, in honor of the state's single 406 area code.  

The 288-page coffee table read is separated into six chapters for Montana’s six official tourism regions and “depicts the state’s diverse landscapes, from the badlands and sweeping prairies in the east to the towering mountains west of the Continental Divide, as well as historic mining towns and ranchlands of the southwest and the rugged river breaks of central Montana,” according to the description of the book.

“It’s been a labor of love for 10 years,” he said.  

AN ITCH for exploration has always been instilled in Austin. He grew up taking trips to different countries with his parents, who owned an adventure-guiding company out of Billings. Though it wasn’t until he set off on his own to college that he truly appreciated the freedom of travel.  

Attending Montana State University as both a football player and nursing major, the two responsibilities became impossible to juggle, so he switched to psychology. While the move eased his course load, he felt like he didn’t have much direction in life.  

He eventually wanted to return to nursing, but all the while grew more and more entranced in photography. Whenever he had free time over the summer months, Austin would spend trips with his friends snapping photos with the same old hand-me-down camera. 

That’s when people started asking to buy the photos.  

“I was kind of taken aback by that,” he said.  

In 2012 he started his first photography business to scrounge a couple of bucks on the side during college. “I’m a broke student-athlete and I got no money. So, if this means I can go get a burrito or go to a movie or go to the hot springs with my friends, then great,” he said.  

But then business ramped up enough to buy better gear. After graduating a year later, he spent nine months traveling the world, trading photos for living expenses.  

During that time, he visited Norway to Nicaragua and spent a long stint backpacking through Southern Africa.  

While he grew up going on intensely planned trips with his parents, Austin’s own travel method was more unconventional. He would show up, no itinerary, no plan, which resulted in lots of hitchhiking and crashing on strangers’ couches.  

“I didn’t really know where I was gonna go and most days I didn’t know where I was gonna sleep,” he said. “Just chaos. And I absolutely fell in love with it.” 

Austin continues to travel with the same no-guardrails mindset. “I’m just showing up, and I’ve gotten some very inquisitive customs agents who don't really like that answer.” By now he’s learned to just pick a random hotel on the map as his destination.   

While the experiences were priceless, he still wasn’t making any money.  

Once the nine months were up, he moved back to Billings, taking up a desk job at tourism brands, Visit Billings and Visit Southeast Montana in social media and public relations. During his year and a half there, he realized working a desk job was not for him.  

“I’m not good at sitting still, I’m not good at being indoors,” he said. 

But the beauty of Eastern Montana struck him. He was sent to Terry, Montana for an assignment and while chatting with some locals at a coffee shop, was told he had to stop by a vista looking out at the Terry Badlands. 

What was meant to be a quick stop became a six-hour ordeal as he basked in the vista’s calming silence.  

“I didn't hear anything, not a person, not a car, not a sound,” he said. “That was the moment I really fell in love with Eastern Montana.” 

A photo of the colorful banded cliffs of the Terry Badlands with the backdrop of a cotton-candy-colored sunset is included in his book. 

Going full throttle on photography, Austin spent his savings on a 2006 Dodge Sprinter van, which became his home for two years. “And that was when the ball started rolling,” Austin said. After taking that leap of faith, he jumpstarted his photography career, taking photos all over Montana and across the mountain West.   

His parents were not ecstatic at first at their son living out of his vehicle to pursue a career in photography.  

“My dad was like, ‘When are you gonna stop chasing rainbows and get a real job?’” Austin said. “And he’s the first to admit now that he was wrong.”   

Even now, nine years after buying it, he’s never looked back from photography.  

“What I love about this job is that no two days are the same. Some days I’m shooting a powwow, I might be shooting a rodeo, I might be shooting a brewery. It’s kind of like everything that makes Montana.” 

And that’s what he tried to capture in his book, which is made up of photos dating back to 2013.  

While Austin said he could have easily filled the pages entirely with snapshots of Glacier National Park, he wanted to unearth the hidden gems of Montana that see much fewer visitors than the well-known tourist attractions. 

“Having grown up in Eastern Montana, I wanted to include a lot of these places that nobody’s seen,” he said. 

Like the Terry Badlands, a lot of Montana’s state parks go unvisited, Austin said. “I photographed all 55 of the parks in Montana and I can tell you that most of them are so underutilized and are incredible,” he said.  

That is a message Austin portrays in his presence on social media, where he looks to educate his followers on the importance of conservation amid federal talks of selling public land.  

“This is my way of living,” he said. “I think it would be silly for me to not use my platform to educate people of the issues public lands are facing from defunding to privatization.”   

Austin donates some of his income to conservation organizations and spends time doing volunteer trail building and clean-up.  

To order the book and learn more visit montanaphotographybook.com.  

Reporter Jack Underhill may be reached at 758-4407 and [email protected].  

  

 Grinnell Glacier is located in the Many Glacier region of Glacier National Park and can be reached via hiking. (Photo courtesy of Andy Austin)

    Photo of an abandoned grain elevator near the city of Lewiston in Central Montana. (Photo courtesy of Andy Austin)
  

    Photo of the Crazy Mountains in southwestern Montana under an aurora display. (Photo courtesy of Andy Austin)
  

    Photo of someone participating in the annual Red Bottom Celebration at the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana. (Photo courtesy of Andy Austin)