Spotted Photo Theme: Doors

Today in my blog posting challenge “Spotted Photo Theme” we’re looking at doors!

Are you a fan of photographing beautiful doors that you pass when you’re on holiday? Do you notice rustic doors frames, painted mail boxes and ornate door knobs and tilt your head to get a look of it from the right angle? Do you stop to snap a picture of people’s homes, hoping they won’t spot you standing outside their front door and think you a creep planning a crime?

Guilty, guilty as charged.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

— Walt Disney

Doors are a architectural feature that opens up the world and that draws your attention in whether you’re a photographer or not. I love seeing unexpected house shapes and materials, the interacting lines, arched doorways, decorated windows and ornamental decorations. I always snap a picture if the opportunity lends itself.

Of course I will always want to photograph pink houses when I see them. They’re not very common around here, so I’m always delighted when I see one and some of them do have lovely doors as well. But I am also a fan of anything wabi-sabi, worn, lived-in, weather-beaten and paint-peeling when it comes to (other people’s) houses & doors.

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.

— Alexander Graham Bell

I’ve had a search for doors of the past, and thought I’d just start with one that I fashioned out of paper:

Visit the blog post to learn what’s inside the operable paper door in my technique journal Book of Dreams.

Or course little doors are also always fun to come upon, and not all doors lead to another room…

The best place to photograph beautifully aged doors are in “old towns” around the world, or in rural and almost forgotten places. I photographed a lot of architecture (and many doors and windows) on a holiday in France back in 2005. It was fun looking back. It’s been 20 years since then, and I hadn’t looked at these photos in a long time. I thought this first one was also from France, but discovered it was on the road there, in Germany:

I love how bleached out the photo looks, although not altered at all. All the colors go together and makes a great but somber palette. The last three photos are all from France though, I hope you like them. Maybe it was my most beautiful door encountering days ever. Notice the little hand knocker on this yellow place for example:

Not everything in a town or city needs to be aesthetically pleasing to everyone. I wouldn’t want to look at this next view every day if I lived on this street, but as a photo it’s cool. I like it:

Not very inviting, right? This one though, is:

I have quite a few more door photos that I really like and that I could share today, but I am going to stop here because this challenge has proved such a rabbit hole for me. I go in thinking “I’ll share a few photos, it’ll be quick” and hours pass. I tag old photos, re-organize my blog, browse through old blog posts, search Flickr (where I’ve been the best at tagging all my uploaded photos) and I start editing photos long forgotten. It’s a maze of do-this-before-I-can-finish-that tasks and endless loops. I guess that’s one reason I missed doing July’s theme “toys”, August’s theme “vintage” and still feel bummed about that. I made it up, I should be able to stick to my own challenge. But no, so here we are today, first day of November and I’m finally able to post October’s theme “doors”. I started this blog post two days ago but run out of time to finish earlier. But today was the day. Yay!

Today I can’t decide what themes to do for the last two months of the year, so let me know if you have suggestions.

Cheers and happy photographing!

This is iHanna’s Spotted Photo Theme Blog challenge. 2025 themes are, January: shadow (selfies | bonus) | February: pair | March: round | April: yellow | May: Repeating (pattern) | June: Treassures | July: toys | August: vintage | October: doors | November: Dec: to be announced, suggestions welcome.