Mort, Frank, and Hall began exchanging photos in Port Said, Egypt,
shortly after they had met in Palestine and decided to travel together. Mort Hartman was writing articles—presumably with photographs—for what we think was his home-town newspaper, the Greenville (North Carolina) News. Frank Aldridge, his traveling companion, was doing the same thing for the Tulsa World. To judge from their photographs, both of the boys had far better cameras than Hall did. Hall gripes about his camera a lot, but is reluctant to spend the money to get it fixed. You can see a photograph of that camera a few posts ahead on August 5 when Hall took a self-portrait in a mirror. No idea what model, except that he called all cameras kodaks, a common practice in those days.
In Port Said, the boys invested in a developing kit so they could take their exposed films and make rolls of negatives. Then they were able to print off as many copies of the best photos as they wanted. There was quite a steep learning curve.
On March 18 Hall wrote “. . .we decided to buy a developing set to do our own films with. I attacked my 13 rolls of film and, with Frank’s help, made 8 rolls of negatives by 3 AM.” The next day he reports: “The evening found Frank and I on negatives again. We had done it all wrong the evening before and had to go over all again. Three [AM] rolled around before we climbed in bed again.”
A day or so later, on the eve of their departure for India, Hall was still at it: “When I finally did gather the loose ends, it was 1 AM, so I decided to stay up all night and work on the films so they wouldn’t pile up on me.”
It is at this point that the boys started exchanging photos—or at least Hall began to get some of Mort and Frank’s snapshots. He pasted them into his photo albums—after he returned home—alongside his own pictures of the same locations, as though he had been with Frank and Mort when their photos were taken, but if you’ll recall, they traveled to Luxor separately and much later on July 2nd split up in Calcutta, the boys sticking around to see the Puri Festival and Hall hurrying on home.
On June 19, Agra, Hall wrote: Frank came back from the photographers with lots of good reports about our latest snaps and of our time exposures of the Taj and a bulb snap I took indoors. Thus my kodak is now vindicated of all blame for poor pictures, since I repaired the bellows. The kodak rolls themselves were spoiled from being carried around with me in the heat and moisture since Port Said. I only had three left, so took them down to a man who has regularly been jipping us on prices, and exchanged them for Ilford films.
We don’t really know where Mort and Frank traveled after Hall left them, although we can guess—from the photos that Hall has—that they went to Bali and then, definitely, to Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat. We’re making inquiries to see if we can’t find Mort’s and Frank’s travelogues as published by the two newspapers.By the time Hall got to Japan, he figured out that he could get great photos by purchasing them—you’ll definitely be able to tell the difference—but he still manages to come up with some decent shots of his own. 
