My “official” bio

Inspired by a History Channel campaign, Andy Hill was determined to produce “surreal moments in time,” creating his own historical perspective of the impact and changes of landmarks in Hastings, Minnesota.

Andy specializes in non-standard digital photography by creating “mash-ups” of historic photos artistically blended with new photography.  The results are surreal moments in time that document both the roots of the landmark as well as the progress surrounding it.

Andy initially concentrated his efforts on the Hastings Spiral Bridge, but has also depicted other lost or changed landmarks. In addition to mash-up photography, Andy uses infrared photography to record various city landmarks including the Hastings City Hall and the LeDuc Estate. The infrared photography process renders the familiar in an engagingly beautiful and unfamiliar way.

Andy Hill is a graphic designer and photographer working at a Minnesota-based marketing communications agency. He is a 15-year resident of Hastings where he resides with his family. 

from the Hastings Star-Gazette, February 14, 2008

Artist is mixing the old with the new

Keith Grauman The Hastings Star-Gazette

Andy Hill was a photography minor in college and was used to working in a darkroom. Around 1993, however, that all changed when he took a class on the photo editing program Photoshop and knew the future was in digital photography. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is pretty cool,’” he said.

And back then Photoshop wasn’t nearly what it is today.

    

“When I took that class it was Photoshop Version 2.5.1, I remember that,” he said. “Version 3 was the first with layers. If you made a change and hit ‘Ok,’ that was it, it was done. I don’t even remember if they had ‘Undo.’” The technology has progressed since then and today Photoshop is the industry standard for graphic design and photo editing. Hill uses it at work, but he also has a hobby that put his Photoshop skills to use at home.

A few years ago he saw an ad on the History Channel that showed a mother and her son picking up shells on a beach. Superimposed on the shot was video of soldiers running up the beach and at the end of the ad the words “Know where you stand” came on the screen. It was Omaha Beach in Normandy, the site of a famous World War II battle.

“That’s sort of where the germ of the idea came from,” he said.

Hill, a 15-year resident of Hastings, started thinking about the concept and eventually ended up in the Hastings Pioneer Room, the city’s historical records room, looking at old photos of the Spiral Bridge. He took one and superimposed it onto a picture of Levee Park today.

The end result is a photo that shows where the bridge was located in reference to surrounding buildings that still exist today. It also shows some old buildings that were adjacent to the Spiral Bridge that are no longer standing.

Another of Hill’s images shows the south side of East Second Street in downtown lined with old cars and the Sieben Pharmacy building still standing on the corner of Second and Ramsey streets where a small park called Oliver’s Grove is today.

Hill does a good job of matching up angles and shadows to get the photos to match as seamlessly as possible.

“The hardest part is finding the spot where the original photographer was,” he said.

In order to do so, it often takes Hill a few trips to the location to match the photos because he’s admittedly a little obsessed with getting it as close to perfect as he can.

For one of his creations that shows the mouth of Spiral Bridge on Sibley Street and the Levee Café building, he looked at the original photo and noticed he was able to see seven bricks in on one corner of the Levee Café building. When he was in downtown trying to match the image, he found the spot that allowed him to see the same seven bricks and starting shooting from there. He also wanted to match the shadows on the window sills, so he waited until the right time of day to take the picture.

The best analogy Hill could come up with for how he matches up the photos is comparing the process to the way cartoons used to be made. He makes one layer transparent (usually the old image), lays it over the new image and moves them around to match them up. That’s the objective part.

The subjective part is deciding what to show from each image. In general, Hill tries to leave as much of the old image as possible.

“Anybody can walk into downtown and see what it looks like now,” he said.

Hill likes to find things like signs and buildings that are no longer around and accent those in his photos. The building the Levee Café is in today was once a gas and service station and the old gas pumps can be seen in front of the building in one of Hill’s images.

He usually leaves the old image in black and white or its original format and the new photo in color to give people a sense of what’s new and what’s old.

Hill got into making the images as a hobby and now sells them on his Web site and at a few art shows throughout the year. It’s the fun of digging through old photos and talking to people who remember the way things were that keeps him at it though.

“I hear a lot of memories from people when they see these,” he said. “Like, ‘Oh my girlfriend was a soda jerk there,’ or, ‘I remember when that building burned down.’ It’s cool to hear those stories from people about the way it was.”

Hill hasn’t created any images outside of Hastings. He said if it starts to feel like work he might be less inclined to do it.

“People have told me I should do it in Stillwater,” he said.

He has, however, basically exhausted all the photos of the Spiral Bridge he’s been able to find so far.

One angle he’s not been able to find but would love to work with if he could, is a view of the Spiral Bridge from downstream, or east of the spiral. He’d love to mix that with one of people waiting for fireworks to start during Rivertown Days in Levee Park.

Today when Hill is in downtown, he can’t help but picture the Spiral Bridge where the American Legion is today because he’s done so much work with photos of the bridge.

Hill’s Web site is www.middletowndreams.net. There you can view some of his images and order prints.