weekly challenge: photograph when one door closes…

This week Traveling at Wits End’s guest post is St. Louis-based photographer David Adams.  He writes that doors:

can be many things. They can be barrier, they can be invitations. They can be utilitarian, they can be ornate. Doors show personality or they can protect us from the world.

David challenges photographers to find “closed doors…no peaking inside” and to look for color, shape, decoration, as well as details…to find a door with personality.

The first time I found myself photographing doors was about 40 years ago while we were living in Newport, Rhode Island. Since then I also found that the doors within historical districts of the southern part of the United States, Australia, and Europe to be intriguing–the west…not so much.

Yesterday, while on an out-of-town trip with camera in hand and this challenge in mind, I undertook a photo walk through a small rural community.  Regrettably, the doors within this town are…boring.  Yet, I found myself thinking how sidewalks, steps, and porches are like a preface to the stories behind closed doors.

While the images above are not beautifully composed and do not specifically “focus” on doors, they do invite me to story the lives of the people who live behind these closed doors and to ponder the question, “how is the war economy doing for you?”