I refer to the subject of the this photograph as the mystery inari shrine. Although it is less than a kilometer from our house, and only about 50 meters off the highway, I had driven past it hundreds of times before I first noticed it. The highway curves as it runs past it, so my eyes are always on the road when I drive by there. I first noticed it on an early evening in late March of 2021 when the lights and the sakura cherry blossoms caught my eye. I returned the next evening to photograph it.
The shrine appears to be quite old, and apparently does does not have a name. All the maps I have looked at just list it by the generic term inari shrine. A stone pillar stands on the path to it has the words 村社稲荷神社 (Village Inari Shrine) carved into it, which I think indicates it had been registered with Meiji government as a local shrine.
Unlike my neighborhood shine, which has stone lanterns with candles lit every evening by the local residents (see my post Neighborhood Evening), the lanterns at this shrine have electric lights that are apparently turned on automatically with either a timer or light sensor.
The starburst effect of the lights was created by the diffraction of the point-light source of the lanterns passing through the aperture blades of the lens I was using. I was using an aperture setting of f/11 to achieve a nice depth of field. The effect was accidental, and was actually the first time I had experienced it with this lens.
Since moving to Mino, I have been printing photographs on traditional Japanese hand-made paper, washi. This image works well on the medium. A 600mm x900mm print of it won an award when entered in the annual Global Artists Movement (GAM) exhibition held in the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.