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Today in Mississippi
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March 2017
By Debbie Stringer Jeff Baldock’s photographs bring to light something that many never see: the beauty of an old downtown after sunset. Mississippi’s historic main streets take on a different character at night when the streets are empty. In Baldock’s pictures, street lamps emit starbursts of light, old buildings glow with color, and twilight paints the sky. Trees cast moon shadows on pavement still glistening from a late-afternoon rain. “I’ve had so many people tell me they did not realize that their town was that beautiful at night. In fact, I have one picture I took in Pascagoula that looks like a street scene in Paris,” said Baldock, a member of Singing River Electric who lives in Hurley. On location, Baldock uses long exposures and tiny lens apertures to achieve a sharp focus that appears infinite. Back home, he uses photo editing software to merge three different exposures of a subject and create a single image. The technique, known as high dynamic range (HDR) photography, produces pictures filled with light—even though they were made in darkness.
Jeff Baldock’s
Baldock is a relative newcomer to fine photography. He joined the Mississippi Gulf Coast Photography Club and bought his first professional-quality digi-
dent worked for a DuPont company before retiring. “I was stopping in places like Moss Point, taking pictures on the way to
“I’ve had so many people tell me they did not realize that their town was that beautiful at night.” —Jeff Baldock
tal SLR about three years ago. “I was retiring and I wanted something fun to do,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about fancy cameras, and I’m not trained in photography. Everything I know I learned from YouTube videos and talking with my peers.” The long-time Mississippi Coast resi-
work. I always had a camera on my office desk and would shoot after work too. “Once a month I’d drive all the way to Bay St. Louis on the coast and shoot my way back across toward Pascagoula.” One day, he set out for a hunting trip to Winston County. “I took the back
way, up Highway 63, and ended up in Waynesboro. And it was like a light went off. I shot their downtown and thought, this is a really cool thing to do.” Baldock posted those daytime photos on Facebook and the response took him by surprise. “Next thing I knew, I had 200 new Facebook friends.” And some requests to purchase prints. Baldock used Google Earth to find street-level views of more downtowns in the state. “It all had to do with the old buildings. I really wanted to capture the beauty of those,” he said. “My qualification is, if there are more than four or five buildings in a row that are old, I’m going to try to shoot them.” Baldock calls his project “Downtown at Night.” Of the 112 Mississippi downtowns he selected to include, he has photographed 75. Upon arriving in a town on his list, Baldock scouts the downtown area for any historic “jewels.” “There are three things I look for: old movie theaters, barber shops and soda fountains.” If the lights are on inside an old store,