This week’s challenge post asks us to share images featuring signs. From the original post, “Signs can direct us where to go, but they’re also pieces of art, which reveal much about the time period and culture in which they were made.” Click here to see this week’s challenge in its entirety.

Of course, I put my own personal spin on “signs”, preferring to feature images that contain non-textual signs. The opening photo features a red light, sign that a brothel is on premises and is open for business. This particular red light is in the window of the brothel museum on the second floor of the Red Onion Saloon in Skagway, Alaska.

In Bisbee, Arizona, these two men are repainting the yellow lane marker signs that indicate which side of the street upon which a car is to travel.

Hikers are familiar with many signs along the trail, only some of which are man-made. At the edge of the trail in Monument Valley in the Navajo Nation is a cairn, a stack of rocks that is a universal mark indicating the traveler is still on the trail.

As hikers have become more “citified”, trail markers have been made more obvious for those who aren’t normally hikers. This example in Sedona Arizona is a case in point. The trail is a different color from the surrounding terrain, it has wooden posts marking the trail edge, there is a directional sign indicating the name of the specific trail, and that little white signpost in the distance along the right edge of the trail makes sure people know where they are. It says, “TRAIL.”

I conclude this week’s photo challenge with a gallery of warning signs, some humorous, some very serious. Click on an image below to enlarge and to scroll through the gallery.

John Steiner