Photographer Paul Horsted celebrates launch of latest e book ‘South Dakota Yesterday & Today’

Following ten years of analysis and journey throughout South Dakota, Paul Horsted’s new book, “South Dakota Yesterday & Today,” is hitting the cabinets.

On Tuesday, Horsted celebrated at a e book launch celebration on the garden of the 1881 Courthouse Museum in Custer. The museum is one in all many historic websites featured in Horsted’s new e book, which is made up of picture pairs documenting South Dakota’s previous and current.

“The last 25 or so years I’ve specialized in repeat photography, where I try to put my camera exactly where somebody did 100 years ago, 150 years perhaps. And I started doing that with pictures of the Custer expedition many, many years ago. That was the expedition that came through the Black Hills here. And that’s led me down a path to finally producing a volume that’s about South Dakota specifically,” Horsted stated.

There are 350 picture pairs of then and now within the e book, documenting about 100 cities and cities throughout South Dakota, together with different historic landmarks and locations. The photographs embody uncommon historic images taken between 75 and 150 years in the past from greater than 50 completely different archives that Horsted searched by.

“Everybody seems to have something that appeals to them in here, whether it’s the Black Hills, the Missouri River, the Central Plains, the Western Plains, the northeast, the southeast. I tried to get to every corner of the state,” stated Horsted.

Modern advances in pictures and different instruments made work on the e book extra environment friendly and correct. Drone pictures, particularly, allowed him to create then and now photographs from new vantage factors.

“I realized there were these pictures taken by early photographers, often from a water tower or a grain elevator, or maybe just the roof of a tall building. Sometimes those structures are no longer there, but you can fly a drone to that same position,” stated Horsted.

“So, for example, in Sioux Falls, the Queen Bee Mill was built in the 1880s. It burned down in 1956. But I had an awesome picture taken from the upper floor of that building in 1910,” Horsted continued. “Now that building is no longer there, the windows long gone, but I could project where that location was using other historic photos. I flew my drone to that site, and then you have this awesome matching comparison of 1910 with today in Sioux Falls.”

At the e book launch celebration, Horsted thanked his spouse and long-time publishing companion, Camille Riner.

“It far too often gets overlooked, her work on these books, is what makes them look so good,” stated Horsted. “I can throw the pictures on a page, but all of this is based on her designs and her skills as an artist.”

Horsted is celebrating the launch of the brand new e book with upcoming events throughout the fall, together with a free program and e book signing on the Journey Museum on Tuesday, Sept. 8, from 6 to eight p.m.