Category: travel

  • The Element Cross Country Adventure

    The Element Cross Country Adventure

    The January 2025 trip was extra special for the FMS team as it had two purposes: vintage photography on the backroads and bringing the Element from Bellingham, WA, to Yukon, OK.

    The short story is simple, Peep built up an awesome adventure rig and sold it to Dixie. I flew to Peep’s hometown and we drove backroads back to Oklahoma through Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. We ventured around 2600 miles and even hit the last Blockbuster in Bend (OR) and a Buc-ees in Amarillo, (TX).

    We captured some amazing locations along the way and met wonderful people who shared their passions, like Jessie and Junior in Likely (CA), Joel with his father’s Galaxie 500 in Twentynine Palms (CA), and Daniel with a group of VW vans off CA62 near Danby Lake. A little further down that road, we ran into a French family, Bilou’s Family, that shipped their VW van over to Canada and working their way down to Panama.

    While on these explorations on the road, we do a lot of searching and looking at everything for great captures that inspire us and hope to encourage others to venture out, off the interstates to experience a slower pace and celebrate the little discoveries. When you seek, you will find and sometimes capture the ordinary that can be extraordinary, like the “Free Piano” just sitting alone off the busy road.

    This post just scratched a little of the surface from Dixie’s camera and Peep will be posting some of his favorites soon. In the meantime, follow us on Instagram, @ForgottenMainStreet, to see more dynamic captures with Fujifilm GFX cameras and vintage manual focus lenses.

    If you have questions or would like to collaborate on a vintage lens project, send us an email forgottenmainstreet@gmail.com to get it started. You can also sponsor a tank of gas on the next adventure!

    Thanks for following our photography passion project!

  • The Trip Back from Lawton, OK

    The Trip Back from Lawton, OK

    There are times when a good roadtrip can ease the pains of stress and help realign your senses into a focused view of life. I love to feel the wind in my hair, either by motorcycle or open car window, while listening to the hum of the asphalt chasing sunlight and the looking for the next discover around the bend. This afternoon was one of those times. I wanted to visit a couple near Lawton, Oklahoma to deliver a camera to borrow for their big trip to Japan. I guess, I really didn’t need to do it, but the idea of 90 miles on the highway was needed to recoup from the long week.

    Now if you know me, I quickly made the trip down working on phone calls and Voxer messages with the various groups I manage, while watching the sun descend from its apex. I knew the trip back to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma would have amazing light for whatever I discovered on the backroads. The diversity of opportunities in this great state never leave me disappointed except the desire for really a really tall mountain range similar to Colorado.

    Passing through the small towns off the main through fare of interstate I-44, I found an abundance of subjects that pulled my heart strings to point my camera towards. The camera of the day was my favorite daily carry, the Fujifilm X-Pro3 paired with various vintage Mamiya-Sekor SX lenses.

    One of the places I discovered was Cement, Oklahoma and the Buzzard’s Roost, both with ties to the famous outlaw Jessie James. I may need to come back again with more time to search for that hidden treasure so many are hunting. In the meantime, I will continue my walkabouts, solo photowalks and backroad adventures with my trusted camera discovering, capturing and sharing the treasures around Oklahoma.

    Visit the Forgotten Main Street Flickr Group and Instagram to see more images from this trip, along with other adventures.

  • Second Adventure Trip – May 2023

    Second Adventure Trip – May 2023

    Our second FMS trip started in Las Vega, Nevada with both of us flying into Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) on May 17, 2023. Peep arrived first and picked out a beautiful BMW X3 that worked flawlessly across all the different road types we encountered on the adventure.

    I feel that future expeditions will need some type of tracking device to save the routes, backroads and places we stopped right off the pavement. The next seven days were packed with nothing but exploring and photography, with a little bit of dreaming mixed in for good measure. We both would love being full time travel warriors discovering the hidden and forgotten treasures of this great landscape called home.

    We hit the ground running to get out of Las Vegas after fueling up at our favorite sandwich shop, Jimmy John’s. I believe we headed north but can’t recall exactly because we were caught up in conversation and during these trips, there is no wrong direction.

    While the routes we choose were not entirely random, we both agreed that any sway of feeling or pull of curiosity was completely valid or no turn was a wrong turn. The common thread of this trip, and others in the future, would be focused on enjoying our limited time together and celebrating whatever discoveries were right around the next turn. In between those twisted curves, we both wanted to visit Zion National Park, Bonneville Salt Flats and maybe a quick dash along Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona. It’s crazy to think, we choose to stay away from the popular tourist attractions including Grand Canyon National Park, but we did manage to clip it heading south on US 89A.

    One of the more important lessons unearthed after getting home, we didn’t discuss the places we missed… because we didn’t miss them because no turn was a wrong turn and no direction was the incorrect way. Well, unless the sun had set and we were rushing back to a good hotel in the few pockets of civilization. In fact, the majority of our time was spend in Nevada and Utah with three of those nights near St. George, Utah, that worked great as a basecamp. You would be surprised the amazing places reached from here in a day’s drive. We did manage to work our way in and out of Arizona along the way.

    We are not going to bored you with a turn by turn guide of this adventure, but instead we want to share our images of the places off the main roads that grabbed our attention, peaked our interest and enticed our hearts. We were all inclusive on the captures, from the beautiful sunset to the automotive rusty relics and discarded towns to amazing geographical oddities of the area.

    Be sure to follow our Instagram feed and our personal accounts so you don’t miss any of the goodness as we share over the next few months.

    FMS Instagram
    Peep’s Instagram
    Dixie’s Instagram

    If you have made it this far down the post, here is a little bonus. We are designing a book of our favorite images from this trip that will be available to order by the first week of November 2023, just in time for Bedford Camera & Video’s large conference PhotoCon. I hope you can attend and meet both of us in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

  • The Next Adventure

    The Next Adventure

    It’s time for another adventure on the open backroads of this wonderful county. Our new trip begins almost a year from the last, traveling from Atlanta, GA to Oklahoma City, OK. Peep continued without me, on a solo tour all the way back to Bellingham, WA.

    This FMS Tour will begin and end in Las Vegas, NV making a loop thought AZ, UT and NV. The goal will be to travel on the secondary roads to engage with the little seen areas and hit a few National Parks along the way. Peep and I will meet at the airport in Las Vegas on May 17, 2023, rent a capable vehicle and head out of town after a solid lunch. I’m hoping for Jimmy Johns, but I think Peep is wanting Panda Express. In any case, grabbing a few Bang energy drinks for the drive is high on the priority list before leaving Sin City in the rear view mirror.

    While the focus will be capturing images with vintage lenses, we had upgraded our kits to the Fujifilm GFX system with appropriate adapters for Mamiya 645, Pentax 6×7 and 35mm SLR lenses. We are very excited to put the system through it’s paces under real world scenarios.

    The exact route isn’t planned yet and most likely will be more of a general direction than a destination, so we can be open to last minute light chasing down dusty gravel roads.

    Be sure to follow our Instagram account @ForgottenMainStreet for updates along the way. If you have ideas of those off the beaten path must see to believe places, shoot us an email or DM on Instagram.

    We also just launched our new SWAG SHOP with shirts that let other understand your passion for vintage lenses.

    Screenshot
  • Delavan, Wisconsin

    Delavan, Wisconsin

    Traveling regularly is a part of my day job as an independent consultant for Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP). I enjoy it almost as much as photography. Having the opportunity to visit other locations and discover hidden gems along the way are one of the many perks of this type of employment.

    While working in Wisconsin, I took a side trip to Delavan and found a city within a town. In fact, the city of Delavan overlays the town of Delavan. Confusing, right? Don’t be. Both entities operate politically independent from each other, but you will get to enjoy the benefits of this quaint area filled with history located about 45 miles southwest of Milwaukee. Nearby is Lake Geneva with a large tourist draw and another popular destination.

    The coolest discovery about Delavan was the circus history. Between 1847 and 1894 it was home base for 26 circus companies and operations. In fact, the original PT Barnum Circus was founded here in 1871 by William Coup. Visit the cemeteries of Spring Grove and St. Andrews to discover over 130 members of the 19th century circus performers buried there, some with elaborate headstones. The US Postal Service issued the five-cent American Circus commemorative postage stamp on May 2, 1966 and Delavan was selected for the first day issue cover.

    On a side note, nonetheless important to our American cultural history, Delavan is the home of Gary Burghoff, better know to many as “Radar” on the TV series “M*A*S*H”. Born in Bristol, Connecticut and moved to the area at a young age, he gained experience acting with the Belfry Players of Williams Bay, Wisconsin, near the previously mentioned Lake Geneva.

    Here are a few images taken with the Pentax Super-Takumar 24mm f3.5 mounted on the Fujifilm X-Pro3 with a Pixco Focal Reducer Adapter.

  • Antioch, Illinois

    Antioch, Illinois

    On a recent trip to Wisconsin, I used some time off to travel around the area in search of interesting places and people. One of the first suggestion on a Google search was Antioch, Illinois, just across the border.

    In this part of the country, the towns are called “villages”, so that does require a change of mindset. The main differences between cities and villages are the government setup. Cities have majors and common counsel, where the villages have a president and board of trustees. The trustees are elected at large were the city major and the council elections are by district.

    Around the late 1880s, Antioch quickly became a popular vacation destination for folks 60 miles away in Chicago. The tourism economy grew after a rail line was laid to Chicago in 1886. Like Chicago, Antioch’s downtown has been changed due to may fires that destroyed most of the buildings in the area during 1891, 1903 and 1904.

    Antioch serves as a bedroom community within the two closest metropolitan areas of Chicago and Milwaukee.

    Here are some of the images I captured during my visit with vintage lenses mounted on the Fujifilm X-Pro3. Lenses used in these captures were the Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 20mm f4 and the Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35mm f2.8.