Tail Light Tales

Welcome to my new obsession.   I hope you can get through this short post without concluding that I'm completely nuts.  In reality, without Afton Station to keep me (and my mind) active, I have to concentrate on something else.  So the other day I was driving down the road and was attracted by the tail lights on the car in front of me.  They were made of a string of tiny LED lights and were quite striking.  From there, I found others composed of LEDs and came to realize that that must be the most modern method of doing tail lights because you don't see them on the older cars.   So I did a tiny bit of research and found that former tail lights got their brightness by being regular white bulbs behind red plastic.  The plastic covers were artfully carved like prisms to get the full reflecting power of the standard bulbs.  Apparently car companies used many interesting patterns in their designs.  Some use a combination of prismatic cutting and LEDs.  Many of them are true art forms and are quite beautiful..

Now, I find myself following cars down the road waiting for them to brake so that I can see how their tail lights look.  This morning, in the dark, I found myself trying to photograph some of the more interesting ones, but two things prohibited me from succeeding in my efforts.  1)  There weren't many cars on the road at 5 a.m. and 2) I got a little paranoid about what drivers would think if they saw me drive up close to them and snap pictures of their car's rear ends.  I decided I didn't want to get beat up or arrested.  The few photos I did take turned out blurred and unfocused since I was so intent on hiding my camera as I shot.

Fortunately, if one puts "Tail Lights" through Google Images, there are lots of close-ups to peruse.  Check it out, tail light lovers.  Or, am I the only one?

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