It was the day of the semi-final game for Griz football, and the team was battling for a chance to go to the FCS national championship game for the first time in 14 years.

Meanwhile, Christianson spent two hours working his way up and eventually back down Mount Sentinel, settling in at the “M.” There, he took the photograph that would soon spread through Montana Griz fans’ internet and social media like wildfire.

The photograph shows the game in full swing, stadium lights shining down on the field and a packed stadium. But the game is framed in the foreground toward the bottom of the image, while the valley’s inversion layer stretches overhead and is dwarfed by a big sky with sunset-pinkened clouds.

From the “M,” the sounds of the crowd were raucous, said Christianson, who listened to the game on his phone until it died. Coming down the trail, he had no idea who had won.

Once he posted the photo on his social media, it was shared thousands of times and requests for prints came pouring in. As a full-time photographer, Christianson said he has had bestsellers throughout the years, but this photo, which he named “Brawl in the Sky,” eclipsed all those sales in a mere 12 hours.

Christianson admits he’s “not a sports person,” although he listens casually on the radio from time to time. But as people reacted to the photograph, Christianson’s perspective began to shift. People shared with him that they have been going to Griz games for generations, attending with their families and bringing their grandkids.

“I’ve just met so many great fans and heard their stories,” Christianson said. “It’s made me have more empathy and compassion for people finding identity and connection through sports.”

Apart from copyright, Christianson said the photo no longer feels like his and has been assigned meaning through all the people who have connected with it and had their own experiences at the game.

The photograph will be on display for a two-month-long show at the Artists Shop beginning on Friday, Feb. 2. It is a part of a series that Christianson calls “Modern Wilderness” and features seven photographs of wilderness areas within a 50-mile radius of Missoula.

Christianson started the series this past fall, putting in countless hours exploring nearby wilderness areas and sitting and waiting for the light to be just right.

Sitting patiently is Christianson’s preferred method of capturing an image and he admits to sometimes waiting for up to six hours at a time.

“I just think it’s really interesting to watch light and see how it changes the presence of anything in nature,” Christianson said.

For him, it’s a space where time can move surprisingly quickly and there’s never a feeling of impatience, even on days when the weather conditions are far from optimal. But for Christianson, photography acts as an “antithesis to depression.”

Depression and anxiety are both something that Christianson has struggled with and he says are inextricable from his journey as a photographer. It’s something that through his work and platforms he is hoping to share his own experiences with others to help alleviate the isolation those struggles can bring.

The “Modern Wilderness” show is a part of that mission and features photographs that not only display the raw beauty of nature, but how it is juxtaposed against humanity.

One of the photographs captures an uncommon natural light phenomenon called the Brocken spectre. It occurs when a person’s shadow is magnified onto a cloud and sometimes surrounded by a rainbow halo. The image warps the viewer’s perception of space and makes Christianson’s shadow seem both larger than it is as well as small amid the vastness of the clouds.

Another photograph was taken on a three-day backpacking trip into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and captures a sunrise over a mountain lake. The picture contains all the elements of the first taste of winter, said Christianson. Golden larches glow across the mountainside and land and trees are coated in the finest layer of snow and frost.

In the hours and days spent out in the wilderness working to capture these images, Christianson said that time was often used to ruminate on what wilderness and creation means to him.

“The show is just all about celebrating wilderness and mental health,” Christianson said. “And to think about how we balance life, living in such a beautiful place in modern times.”