Full Frame | Photography | Travel

52 Week Photo Challenge

April 2026

15-Another Roadside Attraction- Like the book, or not.

I’ve seen quite a few signs in my day.

Stop sign. Zodiac sign. Sign of the times. Sign on the dotted line. Born under a bad sign with a blue moon in your eye.

But I can’t say that I’d ever before seen a Sage Grouse Xing sign.

That is, until I found myself rambling down a jarring dirt road at 10,000 feet along the crest of the White Mountains of Eastern California while on my way to the Patriarch Grove to take photos of some 4,000-year-old bristlecone pines.

This high-altitude saddle in the mountains with its unique species of low-growing sage is the favored habitat of an endangered species of Eastern Sierra Greater Sage Grouse that is genetically distinct from any other population of grouse in the Western U.S.

Each spring, sage grouse gather here for their distinct mating rituals in which the males fan their tail feathers, strut their stuff for the females, and inflate air sacs near their chests to demonstrate their virility and worthiness of propagating the species.

These sage-grouse mating areas are called leks from the Swedish word lekställe, which translates to “mating ground.”

Sage grouse prefer leks that are flat, wide-open and with low-growing sage. This provides male suitors with high visibility and also enables the flock to keep an eye out for would-be predators. Once a lek is established, the flock returns each spring for generations.

I slowed down and passed through the lek carefully lest I disturb any sage grouse canoodling in progress.

16-Out of Line- Interpret that as you will.

Maybe I should categorize this photo as “In Line” rather than “Out of Line.”

But no matter. It has lots of lines, repeating patterns, symmetry, and an interesting vanishing point.

It’s also cold, barren and wintery, with two women — one coming, one going.

I snapped this photo one December morning in Jardin des Tuileries after an overnight dusting of snow in Paris.

17-Shades of Grey- Like the book, or not.

I’m not a big black-and-white photo guy, but this image from the famed Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park looks far better, I think, in black-and white than in color.

It shows a quarter-ton rock that somehow scooted some 15 yards along the dried lake bed.

In the background is a geologic feature known as The Grandstand — a black volcanic-rock outcrop that juts from the center of the 2-mile-wide, 3-mile-long playa.

Get it?

Racetrack — where stones travel mysteriously across the dry lakebed. And a central Grandstand — where spectators can presumably sit and watch the racing stones.

For the story about how a pair of nerdy cousins finally cracked the case and discovered the science behind the Racetrack Playa sailing stones, check out my latest Medium article: *Though the Racing Rocks Riddle is Solved, Mystery and Majesty Remain*.

18-Multiplicity- Interpret that as you will.

The kaleidoscopic dome within the Tilya-Kori Madrasah in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, dazzles with repeating geometric patterns of gold leaf and lapis lazuli.

Unlike Christian churches and cathedrals, which are adorned to the hilt with paintings, icons and statuary depicting important saints and gods, in Islam, such images are haram — mostly forbidden.

Rather, Muslims prefer the power of geometry and mathematics.

The Tilya-Kori Madrasah, constructed in the early 1600s, was a gathering place and education center for some of the world’s greatest mathematicians and astronomers during the Golden Age of Islam.

Today, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and considered a masterpiece of Timurid architecture.

19-Incomprehensible- Like the song, or not.

This quarter-ton rock, which eerily resembles a Star Wars Storm Trooper helmet, has somehow propelled itself atop Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa, leaving behind a quarter-mile track of its route as evidence.

Visitors, geologists and physicists have long been gobsmacked by these nomadic stones. When did they move? How did they move?

Dust devils? Hurricane-force winds? An energy vortex? Pranksters?

My two favorite theories that have been put forth over the decades?

The Soviets have been monkeying with the Earth’s magnetic poles, and this is somehow evidence of those efforts. Hey, it was the height of the Cold War. Blaming the Soviets was everyone’s go-to.

Aliens. Because extraterrestrial life forms from presumably advanced civilizations with superior intelligence have nothing better to do than to troll Earthbound humans by dragging stones around an extremely remote dry lakebed.

It was all so incomprehensible.

Until recently that is.

For the story about how a pair of nerdy cousins finally cracked the case and discovered the science behind the Racetrack Playa sailing stones, check out my latest Medium article: *Though the Racing Rocks Riddle is Solved, Mystery and Majesty Remain*.

Craig K. Collins is a San Diego-based writer, photographer and the author. Check out his latest article, The Curse of Timur, featured in the Spring ’24 issue of Hidden Compass Magazine. You can also view his Hidden Compass: Behind the Byline interview here. Collins is the author of Thunder in the Mountains(Lyons Press, 2014) and Midair (Lyons Press, 2016) and has a novel due out next year.

You can check out his photography portfolio at craigkcollins.com.

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