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He never intended to become a professional photographer. But as more people were willing to pay him to do his hobby — taking pictures of breathtaking landscapes — he made the transition from amateur to professional.
“I’m seeking out the most beautiful areas and to photograph them in the best possible way,” he said last week during an interview in his Dakota, Minn., studio. “You’re just searching for beauty and recording it. And I love that.”
Hurt’s work soon will be on display on the marsh trail near Myrick Park in La Crosse, where a 12-foot panoramic picture of the bluffs overlooking the city will be installed.
The picture was commissioned by the La Crosse Kiwanis Club and the Mississippi Valley Conservancy as a gift to area residents. It shows La Crosse to the east, from about Front Street, and includes breakouts for about five of the bluffs.
Jim Ruppert, who was president of the Kiwanis Club when the project started, said the club annually takes on a project that will benefit the community. It provided the photo of the city on the top of Grandad Bluff, which points out landmarks to the west.
Club members thought a photo showing the opposite view would complement that one, Ruppert said.
Hurt was chosen because of his reputation for “incredible photography,” said Tim Jacobson, executive director with the Mississippi Valley Conservancy and a Kiwanis Club board member, noting Hurt’s work has been used in advertisements, for book covers and other publications.
“All of his work focuses on this area,” Jacobson said. “It’s just wonderful to see those images, how he captures the most beautiful parts of our area.”
Hurt took several sets of 35 individual, vertical photographs of the bluffs while standing on the roof of U.S. Bank building in downtown La Crosse, overlapping a portion of each photo with the previous image.
It took him three hours to take the images and a “phenomenal amount of hours” to make the overall 12-foot photo.
It was difficult to digitally stitch the photos together, Hurt said. Each one had to be precisely overlapped with the one before it, and the slightest change in one area could mean returning to another area.
It took up to 25 minutes to save the work at times, he said.
The project was supposed to be completed last October, but it spilled into 2007 as Hurt worked to perfect the image.
“There isn’t such a thing as good enough with Bob. You have to be absolutely 100 percent,” Ruppert said. “It was worth the wait. Now we have something out there that is absolutely perfect as far as we’re concerned.”
“It really turned out very nicely,” agreed current Kiwanis Club President Kathy Olson. “Bob is a perfectionist, and we are so glad he is because we think it turned out just beautifully. We are so proud to have our name attached to it.”
The photo is on a tour of downtown buildings, and will be at the La Crosse Public Library this week. It should be in its frame on the marsh trail within the next few months.
It’s not just local groups that use Hurt’s images. The Nature Conservancy, a conservation organization that works to protect ecologically important lands and waters, has used his photos of the Mississippi River for various projects.
The Conservancy tries to convey the importance of an entire system, such as the Mississippi River, said Andrew Simpson, who works in the Nature Conservancy’s Midwest office. He described Hurt’s work as “just what we needed.”
Retirement career
Hurt is an architect by training, but has been a “very serious amateur” since buying a Nikon in Japan during leave from a tour in Vietnam.
In 1994, he received a three-year, $340,000 grant from the state of Minnesota to study urban sprawl.
He took aerial photographs to document growth patterns for that project. Offers for work started coming in as he showed the photos throughout the state during presentations.
By 1995, he was juggling his architecture and photography work, and soon started doing more photography than architecture. Last year, he decided not to list his business, Architectural Environment, in the telephone book.
The two professions both have creative and technical aspects, and you can’t have one without the other, he said. And both are about beauty.
Hurt hopes his work evokes emotion in those who view it.
“If you get to their hearts, it may affect their actions,” he said. “Getting into their hearts could give them an an appreciation for the beauty around us. It sometimes can help those things that are precious.”
About Robert Hurt
Age: 63.
Home: Dakota, Minn.
Profession: Photographer, formerly an architect.
Number of photos he’s taken: An estimated 150,000 photos taken over the years. Not all are marketable, Hurt says.
Favorite photography assignment: Being the official photographer for the Grand Excursion in 2004. The 11-day event recreated the original Grand Excursion of 1854.
The 1854 event included more than 1,200 dignitaries, politicians, journalists, business leaders and artists, including former President Millard Fillmore (the nation’s 13th president), on a journey that began on rail from Chicago to Rock Island, Ill., then by steamboat up river from Rock Island to St. Paul and St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, with several stops in riverfront communities along the way. Grand Excursion 2004 retraced this historic adventure.
Hurt and his son, accompanied by two assistants, took more than 16,000 photos during the event. They stopped in 52 cities, and photographed everything from the cities to steamboats, and from helicopters and boats.
MORE INFORMATION: Call Hurt at (507) 643-6765.
Kate Schott can be reached at kate.schott@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8226.
