Ben Morales will sign copies of his book, Hindsight: Northwest Ohio Through the Lens of Time, at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24, at Gathering Volumes, 196 E. South Boundary St., Perrysburg.

Published by The University of Toledo Press, Hindsight features historical black-and-white photos that Morales held and lined up in front of the same locations to take new seamless shots that meld time.

It all started four years ago when the graphic designer was working at a local ad agency and was looking for inspiration for the “You Are Here Toledo” project. He searched for an old photo of the Washington Street Bridge.

“I found a really nice old shot of the bridge and, along with that, I found a lot of old shots of the Toledo area that I’d never seen before,” Morales recalled. “I was just kind of amazed by the richness of Toledo’s history and how interesting it looks and how different it looks, but at the same time, we could still see a glimpse of that today that I hadn’t really taken notice of until then.”

Something compelled him to print out a couple of the black-and-white shots. He cut out the images of the former Key Bank on Madison Avenue and a shot looking down Madison and tucked them into his pocket.

“On my lunch break, I was just walking around downtown and thought it would be cool to go to the actual locations and compare and contrast — look at the photo compared to how it looked in real life,” he said. “So I took the opportunity to walk to those locations and do my best to line them up, and I took my first shots with my old iPhone 4.”

Then he posted the photo of the old-timey snapshot framed in the present on Instagram.

“The photos got a really resounding response, and people suggested more locations,” Morales said. “I thought it would be interesting to try to see if I could find more of these photos and continue it as a series.”

Photos and historical information on The University of Toledo, Ohio Theatre, Toledo Zoo, Holy Rosary Cathedral, Oliver House, Toledo Museum of Art, Side Cut Metropark, and other landmarks are included in the 145-page book.

“There’s just something about old photos — there’s just sort of a haunting beauty behind them,” Morales mused.

Hindsight: Northwest Ohio Through the Lens of Time is $39.95 and is available at at Gathering Volumes, as well as online at utoledopress.com and at Rockets Bookstore, 3047 W. Bancroft St. Review copies are available by contacting Yarko Kuk, managing editor of the UT Press, at yaroslav.kuk2@utoledo.edu.

“The past is all around us, but we don’t always notice it because it is often tucked away in between modern structures, and it may not be quite as visible as it once was,” Morales said. “I want people to be able to see, notice and appreciate the beauty of the past and take ownership of it.”