“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.” – Tom Robbins
Have you noticed the purple street lights while driving around town? Well, I have. I thought it was a new thing they were trying out to make the roads easier to drive at night. Turns out I was wrong. The purple color comes from a manufacturing defect in LED modules. These were installed between 2017 and 2019. A yellow phosphor coating is designed to turn the blue LED light into white light. However, it flakes off and reveals the raw blue color. They are not even supposed to be there. However, the light they emit produces amazing photos. If you are not a photographer, you might not realize that photographers flock to these. The light they emit makes some pretty cool photos. The U.S. Department of Transportation has declared that these lights need be removed because they go against safety standards. Photographers are trying to capture as many photos as they can with them as part of the subject. Get to them while you can, before they are gone.
I know of two purple street lights in our city. One is near my church, over in the University City Area of Charlotte. The other is in my neighbor’s backyard. I decided to capture some shots last weekend with my camera, taking advantage of the purple light. We have had every form of winter precipitation you can think of in North Carolina this winter. From ice storms to bomb cyclones, we have seen it all. This winter we had a crippling ice storm hit our area. Luckily, we were spared the massive power outages, but the roads were covered in a sheet of ice. I was active with my camera during both storms. The illegal blue light shows the layer of ice over the tree in my backyard.
Through Griffin's Lens 