Montana Stockgrowers Announces October Release of Montana Ranching Photography Book

In early October, the Montana Stockgrowers Association will release Big Sky Boots: Working Seasons of a Montana Cowboy, a coffee table photography book featuring the work of MSGA’s multimedia outreach specialist, Lauren Chase. Chase has spent the past year and a half gathering photographs for the book, traveling in sunshine and snow to ranches across Montana. The book takes the reader on a journey through a year in the life of Montana’s cowboys—through calving, branding, and shipping, and everything in between.

“Our goal with this project has been to create a unique, fun, engaging and interactive way to tell the story of Montana’s ranching families that raise the beef that consumers all across the world enjoy,” said Chase. “There seems to be a growing disconnect as people, even here in Montana, are losing touch with what goes on at ranches and farms, and where our food comes from.”

Big Sky Boots is part of a larger project to bring beef eaters closer to the people who raise and care for cattle. The project uses social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to tell the stories of Montana’s ranching families through photo albums, audio slide shows, and videos.

The book connects the social media platforms to the printed page. “Something really unique to our book is that we have included QR codes that people can scan with their smartphones,” Chase said. “They can go to MSGA’s YouTube channel to watch a video of the rancher featured in the book and hear directly from him about his life. In that way we’ve really tried to marry the traditional print media with the social media that seems to be central in so many people’s lives today.”

One hallmark of Big Sky Boots is that the photos are largely untouched or enhanced by photo editing software. “A lot of books that are out there right now depict a romanticized view of the West and of the cowboy lifestyle,” Chase said. “We wanted to make sure to show life as it really is on Montana’s ranches. I think there is a tremendous amount of natural beauty in the pictures and it gives the reader a glimpse into the life of a real cowboy in Montana.”

Big Sky Boots is the first book in a series of five books that MSGA will develop over the next five years. The next book, already in production, will feature the women that are an essential part of today’s ranching families.

To learn more about this project and to pre-order a copy of the book, visit http://www.mtbeef.org. The books are $75, which includes shipping and handling. The profits from the book will help support the continuation of MSGA’s “Telling the Story of Montana’s Family Ranchers” project into the future. To see Chase’s photography and other multimedia work, be sure to visit MSGA’s Facebook page or YouTube channel.