Focus On: The Portals of Fes

All right Sports Fans, as we wrap up 2012, I thought I'd wrap up this series on Morocco as well. And so, I'll sign off with my take on the arches, windows, and doorways of Fes. 

Happy New Year and see you in 2013.

Focus On: The ONCF

One of the things I was looking forward to during my trip to Morocco was the chance of riding the Office National Chemin de Fer (ONCF) - the Moroccan State Railroad company. Being from Chicago, I have a bit of an interest in trains (no, really) and while I’ve ridden plenty of metro systems throughout the world, this would be my first chance to ride intercity heavy rail outside of the US.

To be sure, taking the ONCF was partly born of necessity - inter-Moroccan air travel was expensive and not particularly convenient and renting a car would have been problematic given the distances I wanted to cover. Talking to people who had been in Morocco before, I came away with a pretty good feeling about the ONCF, but even then I still wasn’t sure what to expect. I mean, Amtrak approaches third world levels of service on its own, and now I’d be taking the train in Africa.

Well, as I’ve mentioned before, Morocco is not Africa and is certainly not a developing country. And the ONCF was - quite simply - the only way I could imagine traveling in the country. Yeah, trains were a little late once or twice, but certainly no worse than the US. And while they were perhaps a little dated (I’d guess they were comparable in levels of comfort to US trains in, say the fifties to the seventies) they were more than serviceable.

One quirk of the ONCF which I feel compelled to share with you however, should you ever find yourself in Morocco, is that First Class is a rip-off. In first class, you have assigned seating in a six person compartment (3x3 facing each other). Whereas in Second Class, it’s 2x2 open seating. Basically my First Class ticket entitled me to sit by the door of the compartment, two seats away from the window, staring at someone for four hours. In Second Class, I could pick my own (window) seat. The comfort level was the same (maybe in the summer an air conditioned compartment is worth it. In February? Climate control wasn’t an issue.). Needless to say, I rode Second Class with my First Class ticket (thoroughly confusing the conductor in the process).

Finally, any railroad that has orange trees growing in its stations has to be doing something right.

Focus On: The Satellite Dishes of the Old Medina

As I mentioned in my previous entry on Fes, I went in with few preconceptions about how to shoot the place. To be honest, this hasn’t worked out for me well before or since, but for whatever reason, I was able to arrive in Fes, walk around for a day or so, and figure out some photographic themes I wanted to explore. One of them was the omnipresence of satellite dishes.

Now, I’ve traveled fairly extensively in the developing world and the Middle East (though it's worth noting that Morocco is not the first and is arguably not the second), so I’m no stranger to seeing a forest of satellite dishes bolted onto here and there and spread across the landscape as some sort of fiberglass kudzu. But for some reason it just struck me more in Morocco. Maybe it’s because Morocco is not a developing country, and yet it still is infested with these ubiquitous devices. Maybe it was just the juxtaposition with the classic architecture of the old medina. Whatever it was, they were everywhere.

Focus On: The Passages of the Old Medina (Updated and Bumped)

(26 Nov 12) - All right Sports Fans, in lieu of me continuing to drag on publishing the remainders of the SecState visit, I thought it best to plow ahead with some other content while I wait for my muse to catch up to me. I published the below some time ago with the expectation that I'd have enough photos for a second post on the passages. Turns out, not so much. So, in a bold and decisive decision, I've just updated and reposed this post. Enjoy.


I can't say that it was a conscious decision - going in at least - to focus on the passageways in the old Medina of Fes, but it was obvious to me soon after my arrival that I was drawn to them. After a day or so, I began to seek them out - the more mysterious, the better. I like the feeling of claustrophobia I get while looking at these, although I should say that I never really felt it while wandering the Medina. I never thought that it was THAT hard to navigate (although I did get turned around a few times) but your mileage might vary.

The Blue Gate

I had a much longer post about how this shot angers up the blood since there was a (illegally) parked pick up truck to the left of the frame which forced me to compose this tighter than I wanted to but then I thought, what’s the point – I still like how it turned out.