Thursday Doors: 5/6/2021 Reopening Doors

Wow, my last post was on the 3/18/2021 Thursday Doors and I’ve been out of touch for awhile. I’m sorry for the inactivity as I took a road trip to Washington State for almost a month. We had a great time renting a house in a small city called Anacortes and used that as home base for a few weeks before moving on to other locations.

The original plans for this trip was to visit the farms that displayed their daffodil and tulip blooms for the spring but it turned out to be much more than I anticipated. The spring time weather up north was cool, very much like the cool weather in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we kept our social distancing protocols because my wife wasn’t able to get her COVID vaccination before we left for this trip.

The house we rented included bird and squirrel feeders in the yard and daily deer visitors because the owner made it a daily routine to put out feed for the deer; every morning we woke up to see the hummingbirds feeding near the dinning room window and the packs of deer looking for their food and domesticated rabbits that were left to roam the yards on their own. And then, there were the bald eagles that we were lucky to see all over the neighborhoods or rural areas that we visited.

For this Thursday Doors post, I am showing an old barn we found in the nearby town of La Conner. Old barns dotted the landscape but many were on private properties so we couldn’t get close enough to get those photos. This one was abandoned beside the roadside and we had some good cloud formations on that day. The old barn doors were a great find!

Old Abandoned Barn in La Conner, WA

I’m still working on photos from this trip and when I get some door photos processed I’ll feature them in future Thursday Door posts. If you’re looking for world class photos of doors posted by world class door aficionados, please visit Dan Antion’s No Facilities website where he manages the Thursday Doors blogs and posts some of the best features about doors and their history.

The surprise part of my road trip was it also turned out to be one of the best birding adventures I have experienced. I shot photos of the owl below and went back to that location several times and saw it hunting and at times with two other owls. There were also bald eagles and harrier hawks there and on the last visit I also saw a weasel running across the road in my rearview mirror but I didn’t get that shot. I shot a photo of the owl below and not knowing the species I contacted our resident birding expert and Thursday Door blogger, Deborah, to learn what kind of owl it was. Her quick research suggested that it was a Short Ear Owl and I later learned it was a cousin of the Hawaiian Owl called a Pueo.

I’m going to end this post here and I hope to post more door photos from this trip along with some other photos of interest.

Thursday Doors: 3/18/2021 Erfoud, Morocco

My last post, apologies that I have not added anything for a few weeks, took you to our arrival to Erfoud. I looked for some doors that may have preceded our arrival there but most of my shots were taken from our tour bus passing the nomadic Berbers tending their sheep and the doors were mostly of tents. However we did pass through the Atlas Mountains and through the community of Ifrane which had university and ski resort area as I recall, with very modern expensive looking buildings (sorry no doors were found of interest there during our rest stop). The temperature was very cool so we were at a high elevation.

This was the building of the Hotel Le Charmonix in Ifrane.

Sorry no door on this tent.

But this structure had a utilitarian door

And as we passed this village we could see the snow covered mountains in the background, it was too far to feature any doors in this shot.

After arriving at Erfoud my last post showed the doors from a mosque. But after visiting that mosque we stopped at a fossil factory to learn and see how they find slabs of rocks with fossils embedded in them and how they extracted the fossils to make decorations and furnishings. This is where I found a couple of noteworthy doors.

This is a slab of rock with fossils that they were extracting by chipping away the rock to expose the fossils in 3-D.

While I am still editing my photos and finding more doors to post I’ll end this post with a shot of the camel ride tour we took in the Sahara Desert during sunset which was the end of this tour stop.

Thanks for visiting; please check out Dan Antion’s No Facilities site where he hosts the Thursday Doors posts.

Thursday Doors, 2/18/2021: Moving On from Fez in Morocco to Erfoud

We left the city of Fez after spending a day on tour there, but the doors I posted from that city, if you followed my blogs, made it seem like we spent several days there. The travel to Erfoud took us a full day in the tour bus as we traveled through the Atlas Mountains through the Ziz Valley to the Sahara Desert area.

Wikipedia defines Erfoud as an oasis town in the Sahara Desert, in the Drâa-Tafilalet region in eastern Morocco. It is divided into several districts: Hay Salam, Hay Jdid, Hay Ziz, Hay el Bathaa, Hay Annahda, and Hay el Hamri. I’m not sure if we visited all of those districts but we visited a few places before heading out to the Sahara Desert for a sunset camel ride in the sand dunes.

We arrived at the Hotel Erfoud in the evening with a welcoming committee waiting for us with open doors.

They told us that after checking in we could go to the rooftops to see and photograph the sunset and then have dinner and prepare for the next day’s adventure.

There were no doors worth photographing on the rooftops so I just took shots of the sunset over the desert like this image.

The next day, we headed for a mosque called the Mosquée moulay Ali Chrif in Rissani. This is where my Thursday Doors will feature a couple of doors.

The entry into the mosque had a beautiful wooden wall with a cutout for the doors. Our tour members give you a scale of how large the wall was.

The next photo is of the same door but a little closer to show the details.

Inside the mosque you encounter many arches, sorry no doors.

I did find a beautiful ornate entry door to photograph but I don’t recall what was on the other side of it.

These are the doors that I processed for this tour day in Morocco (which was about a year ago). Thank you for visiting. If I find other door photos from this location I’ll post them in another Thursday Doors blog but if you’re craving for more door photos, please visit Dan Antion’s website for all of the Thursday Doors that he posts and manages for other door bloggers.

Thursday Doors 2/4/2021: Exit Doors to Fez

I’ve spent a lot of time posting doors from the Fez Medina and I’ve reached the end of that visit to that city but there are other doors in other cities we visited in Morocco so look for those doors in future posts.

The exit doors to our Fez visit happen to be the exterior of the Royal Palace to King Mohammed VI of Morocco. I’m posting two photos at slightly different angles but you can see how huge these doors are by the scale of the guards and our tour members in front of the palace.

In my comments to Dan on last week’s Thursday Doors, there were many shots that I photographed using street photography techniques; basically, having your camera setup to shoot quickly and being ready to compose and shoot at split second. The shot below is one of those street shooting shots and here is the backstory on it. As our local guide led us through the crowded alleyways or walkways through the Medina we had to try to walk single file to let the people pass on the other side. I was near the front of our line, maybe a couple of our tour members in front of me behind our guide and I caught a glimpse of an image ahead but behind our guide so I quickly stepped to the right and got a shot, maybe it was a couple of shots before I dropped back into line. As I previewed what I shot I was elated at getting something that might turn into a good composition. It was almost a month later after returning home and doing some post processing that I discovered what I really shot. At first, I thought this might be my signature shot from this trip and after reviewing the final edits of this image but then it became something deeper. The image can be called Pauper or Sinister and I’ll explain more after you see the image.

Is the face hidden? Yes, on close examination the hood over this beggar’s head hides his face but I discovered otherwise. Can you see another face or even more faces on the wall. The sinister face I mentioned is on the wall. Hold the photo away from you and look again. There is a face on the wall; the right eye of the face appears just over the left shoulder of the pauper, the crack in the plaster exposing the concrete to the left of the pauper’s shoulder can be the bridge of the nose and to the left of that is the left eye; the eyes look towards the left front. Sometimes the camera captures more than what we thought we saw and while this could be considered a coincidence it certainly was more that what I saw in that split second to capture this shot.

To Tegan, maybe this is an image to find its way into one of your mystical stories. I’ll end this post here as I’m already late in posting this Thursday Doors blog and if anyone wishes to see more door images, please visit Dan Antion’s Thursday Doors blogs.

Thursday Doors 1/28/2021: All About Big

Our Door Meister, Dan Antion, has left the door open for late arrivals so I’m posting my doors for last Thursday Doors. I’m still working on doors that I encountered in Fez, Morocco and hopefully you’re not getting tired of them.

The first three photos are of the same door but from different perspectives. After passing through the Tannery area we doubled back (not sure if that is true because the alleyways look similar and head off in all directions) and stopped at what looked like a mosque. There was a huge door at the opening and there were several archways in the room leading to a courtyard with a fountain.

Here is a big door. You’re looking at the side of the door but you can see that it is very tall.

The next image is the same door but from a different perspective; the people in font of the door is from our tour group.

The next photo is looking through that door opening to the courtyard outside where people are walking in the water overflowing from the fountain or filling their cups with the water.

The next image is a very ornate door opening but you can see the door on the left side; another big door.

And to end this post, a big door and entry into one of the Fez museums; it’s either the music museum or woodworking museum. There were a lot of sleepy cats hanging around this museum and maybe Dan’s friend, Teagan, might be interested in this one since she has an affinity for cats.

If you haven’t already visited Dan Antion’s Thursday Doors blog you might want to do so to see his great door posts and other door bloggers that he hosts.

Thursday Doors: Heavy Metal?

Still posting door images from Morocco, Fez to be more precise.

I found this door in the Medina and it sure looks well secured. With the metal studs it looks like a heavy metal door.

However, upon closer inspection it’s an all wooden door (closeup cross section).

Thanks for visiting; be sure to look for Thursday Doors hosted by Dan Antion to see his amazing images and stories and other door contributors.

Getting Back to Doors

This is a very short post as time is running out and I wanted to get the Thursday Door repetitive posting muscles back in action. The way I see it, if you start posting doors again it might get easier to continue doing so.

I checked my photo archives that I am still post processing from a trip to Morocco in February and March 2020, wow it seems like it was so long ago! Life in pandemic does funny things to your concept of time.

Here’s an ordinary door that I walked past in the Fez medina.


That’s it for this week; door posting muscles feeling stronger already ;-D Also, be sure to check Dan Antion’s No Facilities Thursday Doors posts for other door bloggers’ posts at https://nofacilities.com/category/thursday-doors/

A New Beginning

Thursday Doors is under new management by one of the original participant bloggers when it debuted under the founder, Norm Frampton, our Canadian friend. Dan Antion, Norm’s made in America counterpart, will continue the legacy of Thursday Doors but don’t be surprised if you see some train related doors once in awhile. I swear, Dan is like a walking encyclopedia telling us about interesting historical facts that gives his door photos life and don’t blink because he throws some real funny stuff into his blogs.

So this is my Thursday Doors photo for Dan Antion’s inaugural Thursday Doors in his No Facilities website. Be sure to check out posts by other door aficionados at: https://nofacilities.com/2020/12/03/welcome-to-thursday-doorsas-always/

This was taken from Freak Alley in Boise, Idaho. The one door that I found is in the yellow painted image of some kind of animal with sloth-like claws in a cage.