Lantern Corner

December has begun. I woke up, lay in bed, snoozed several alarms and eventually rolled out of bed and into some clothes Wallace & Gromit-style before heading to the canal at the end of my street to help clean-up the towpath. There was a hefty turnout, aided greatly by Warwick SU's involvement. Many thanks to Ben Sundell and Cat Turhan for helping students get involved. It's rare I do anything helpful.

After finishing yesterday's curry, I caught up on odd jobs before heading out for an hour and a half of tutoring. I tutor A-level Maths to a kid who lives in Leamington on Sunday evenings. On my way home, I took a bit of a detour and ended up by this sweetshop which I passed nearly every day last year.

I wanted this shot. It defies everything good photography should be. There seems to be no conscious control over the mise-en-scene, the lighting is irregular and instead of having a parallel lines along the thirds in the foreground meeting at infinity, two streets diverge from the sweetshop centrepiece, meeting only directly behind the camera. It's shoddy and was rushed but I love it.

That sweetshop holds for me many memories of not buying anything from it on a daily basis. No other shop in the world have I noticed so often but patronised so little. I love that it's on a corner, I like its windows and the Dickensian vibe. I wanted the streets sliding away to the sides, almost thrusting the sweetshop further into the foreground. I played around with cropping out the sandwich board and the traffic sign, but I like those imperfections: they lend context to the shop. I dunno, I'm still unsure why I like this photograph so much. For whatever reason, it's today's photograph.