So Good, It’s Illegal

“The price of greatness is responsibility.” – Winston Churchill

There are a lot of strange laws in our country. My state is no stranger to them. For example, it is illegal in North Carolina to use an elephant to plow a field. Tractors are only in this state. Bingo games can not last longer than 5 hours, and there cannot be any alcohol consumed at any of them. In 2013, North Carolina passed a law making the theft of kitchen grease valued over $1,000 a felony offense. Yes, you read that right—cooking grease! It is also illegal to steal a Venus flytrap from its native habitat in North Carolina. They are indigenous near Wilmington, N.C.

Have you ever seen the purple street lights where you live? 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 is due to 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 to 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.