Photo Essay: The Door-Number Game

Have you ever noticed how interesting even the most common objects can be? Take doors for example. We use them all the time and hardly even notice when we do (unless our finger gets caught in one of them!). But as travelers we encounter many beautiful doors in our excursions across towns, through villages, and within historical sites.

While traveling in Europe, I had noticed that some of the doors are very much like works of art. On a recent trip to Portugal and Spain, I thought it would be nice to take photographs of some of the doors I encountered, but I wanted to make something more out of my photos than just a random collection of doors.

I decided that I would take photographs of doors in numerical order. I would start with a door whose address was #1, and then I would move on to #2, never taking back-to-back photographs on the same street (where's the fun in that?). I wondered how high I would be able to count if I put all of the photographs together.

The ten photos here are the first results of my efforts in Spain. I started this exercise halfway through our trip, so I only made it up to #13 before we had to return home. Some doors are prettier than others, but all of them are part of the story of our time in Spain. Together I think they are very beautiful.

I will definitely repeat this exercise in the future. The next time you're exploring some place new or old, take a look at the doors around you and see how high you can count.