A walk in the rain with my favorite lens, the gorgeous manual-focus Asahi Pentax Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4 from 1968.

Its use of thorium oxide, a radioactive rare-earth element, caused the internal glass to undergo a chemical change over time, giving it an amber or yellow “tea-stained” tint. This tint creates a natural warmth, and the bokeh is beautiful.

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Day Six continued in the middle. My Middle Ground trip had two middles. I posted earlier today about Lebanon, the center of the continental US, and the other was the sign in Kinsley, Kansas, 165 miles south. Why two? Well, Kinsley, nicknamed “Midway USA,” sits on U.S. Highway 50, marking an equal distance of about 1,561 miles in either direction between New York City and San Francisco.

My research for this trip started in 2016. Robert Frank was the original influence. His book, “The Americans,” originally published in 1958, has been in my collection for many years. He was a photographer who traveled the country funded by a Guggenheim fellowship, and like everything great, his work was not loved at first. It was critical in both content and technical skill, and it was not perfect in any way. One of my first photography teachers introduced me to his work, and it has stuck with me for 30 years.

I still live by the idea that photography is not meant to be perfect; it is the flaws that make it real. In a podcast I did leading up to this trip, I was quoted in the teaser page as saying, “Failing is a big part of photography; I love to fail!” That is Frank’s influence on me, and I have done all I can to pass that on. I push the camera’s limits and share less-than-perfect work all the time. The fact that Robert Frank journeyed through America to capture it on a less-than-perfect medium was fitting because this country is far from perfect, and I mean that with respect and experience, not as a slight. I assume Frank meant the same thing, and that might be why he was criticized.

What does this have to do with this photo? Nothing obvious. This is not the part where I tell you Robert Frank took a similar photo, or that he stood here. As far as I know, he did not.

Todd Webb did.

Todd Webb was another photographer of the same era. He too was given grants from the Guggenheim Foundation to photograph America at the exact same time as Frank, but neither knew of the other’s project. I had read they met years earlier at a New Year’s Eve party, but their trips were entirely separate. Yet if you look at the photos side by side, the similarities are incredible. The biggest difference is that Frank’s work was published in the 1950s, while Webb’s work was lost to time until it was found in a steamer trunk in California in 2017. I remember reading about it right after it was discovered. He was a known photographer with plenty of published work, but that specific trip took him years, traveling months at a time by foot, bike, and even a Vespa, and the work was not seen until 60-some years later.

Here is where I join the circle. I followed the story of Webb’s discovered work, which was eventually combined with Frank’s and traveled the country as a museum display. My daughter and I caught it at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts, in July 2023. The show was remarkable, and I even made it a dailypic. The photo I chose to feature that day in the post was of this very sign, taken by Webb in 1955, but not seen until 2017 and not printed until 2023. Only ten were printed, and all are sold or in museums. I own print number six; it is hanging in my studio right now.

Now the sign has changed and been updated, but the spirit is the same, and it sits right here in Kinsley where Webb stopped and took his photo. I did the same. Not only did I take a photo of it, but I also shot it with the exact same model camera he used, a 1950s Rolleiflex Twin Lens loaded with black and white film.

That camera has been in the shop twice in the last year just trying to get it ready. It leaks light when it feels like it, and to be honest, it did not behave well on the trip. But that goes right back to the failing idea I just shared: photos don’t need to be perfect to be shared.

The negatives were processed yesterday, and there is a light leak right in the middle of the frame, pun intended. I took nine shots with the Rollei. I also shot it with every camera I had with me, including my phone, drone, Widelux, Hasselblad 500c, and Hasselblad X2D, but the Rollei is the legacy this sign deserves. I got one clean frame, and it is the closest to the actual angle Webb shot.

I will admit I teared up when I saw the sign. I pulled in and said, “Holy Shit,” to absolutely no one. Six days of driving to get to that sign, and there it was. I stayed there for over an hour.

In processing the files last night, I had an idea. The nine frames make a square, the native format of the camera is square, I love square photos, so why not share all the frames in one shot? I will still print the decent single frame. I am going to bring it to the Woodshed in Franklin, the shop that framed my original print of Webb’s, and I will hang them together. But these nine frames make a cool story as a team.

I am not a spiritual man. It is a choice we all have the right to make, and that is mine. But, and this is a huge “but” for me, I look at that light leak in the middle of my middle photos as Todd Webb’s input in some way. He is in my photo, and I leave it at that.

I thank Mr. Frank for introducing me to Mr. Webb, and I thank Mr. Webb for pointing me to a sign, and both of them for my trip.

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This is the pond at Choate Park in Medway, photographed today, May 31, 2026, around 2 pm.

I have far better shots at this very spot — more than I can count — but none can compare to this one and the 7 others that follow below.

The camera is a Kodak Vest Pocket (KVP), also known as the Soldier’s Camera, because it was wildly popular during the war — The Great War — WW1. Mine is from 1915, one of the first cameras to use 127 film. It has a trapdoor on the back that lets the user etch notes into the film with a stylus after each frame is taken. Mine is still attached. I even have the original advert for it hanging in my studio – ‘Put a Kodak in Your Pocket’ pharmacy promo.

I had not used this camera before today. I spent some time with it this morning getting it into working order. It came to me in decent condition, but being 111 years old, it needed some attention. I took it into the darkroom and checked for light leaks by shining a flashlight through the seals and bellows. I got the shutter loosened up. The viewfinder needs a cleaning, but it served its purpose. Gaffer’s tape over anything suspicious, and I was ready for film.

The film is a story in its own right — one I’m not entirely clear on. I have no memory of where it came from. I believe it was tossed in with a bunch of stuff I picked up at Brimfield, maybe 10 years ago. A never-opened roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan 127, still in the box, expired June 1974.

The original plan was to unroll it, use the backing paper to re-spool modern film onto the old spool, and shoot the camera with something that might actually work. Then it occurred to me — I had nothing to lose. Load the old film. It works, it works. It doesn’t, I still have the spool and backing paper and I try again.

It worked.

My 111-year-old camera, loaded with film that expired 52 years ago. Eight exposures. I had no expectations. I went to my testing ground and tried different settings. This camera doesn’t have settings like most cameras — its apertures are labeled: 1 Near View Portrait, 2 Average View, 3 Distant View, 4 Clouds Marine. Shutter speeds: 25, 50, T, B. I modified my development time to give the old emulsion its best chance, and processed the roll by hand in my darkroom.

I was genuinely shocked when I unrolled the strip and saw real negatives.

The oldest camera and film I’ve ever shot. My first time working with 127. A pain to spool for development. And one of the best projects I’ve ever done. I might pick up more 127 film, or use that backing paper to roll my own — but no matter what I shoot in the future, nothing will match today. Something was created from what I fully expected would be nothing.

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Old stuff deserves old gear. Armed with two film cameras, I headed to the Brimfield Antiques Show today. Rain and gray made the black-and-white even more appropriate. The wide angles are my 1976 Widelux 7, and the ‘standard’ sized photos are the 1952 Leica IIf. Both loaded with Kodak TX400 film, processed in my studio when I returned today, all ready to share the same day. I am loving seeing the world through film again. It’s beautiful.

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In the fall of 1996, not long after I bought my photo store, there was a flea market in the parking lot on a Saturday. A kid came in looking for film for a camera he’d just bought at the sale — paid a few bucks for it. He was annoyed when I didn’t stock it. In 1996, nobody did. It was a dead format.
I tried to explain that it was actually a remarkable camera. A 110 that accepted interchangeable lenses. I’d never seen one. He wasn’t impressed.
So I offered him five dollars and a disposable camera. He left happy. I got the camera.
It was broken — the advance arm wasn’t engaging — but it didn’t matter. No film anyway. So it went on display, moved from shelf to shelf, store to studio, for the next thirty years.
I recently started buying film stock to test cameras in the collection. When I found a roll of 110, I picked up the Pentax. I was going to run it through a Rolleiflex 110 I have, but that one needs a battery mod first. So I decided it was finally time to fix the camera I’d been moving around for three decades. Twenty minutes, a YouTube video, and a small screwdriver. Done.
I took it for a walk.
The Pentax Auto 110 is the smallest SLR ever made – check out the museum post to see it. The viewfinder might be the smallest I’ve ever looked through. My eyes aren’t what they were, and the shutter is touchy — I tripped it a few times before I was ready. One double exposure from the advance arm acting up mid-roll, though a tap fixed it.
I haven’t shot 110 since I was maybe nine years old. I think I borrowed my mom’s camera for a field trip before I got my own disc camera. I loved it.
I developed the roll in my studio. Twenty-four frames of imperfect, beautiful moments. The grain, the soft edges, the slightly wrong colors — these are the photographs of my childhood. If I’d made any of these with my Z9, I wouldn’t be posting them. Shot on a forty-five-year-old camera I bought for five dollars and a disposable, with film in a format the world gave up on, love them all.
Perspective.

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