It must have been around 2005 when I visited the home of Belfast artist Denis Johnston and viewed some of his paintings.  Denis lives in Belfast and was a member of the same church as me at that time, and so I would have visited him on occasions, but on this particular visit he showed me some of the art he had showed on display in an exhibition.  The imagery was stunning, with amazing technique and beautiful scenery.  Yet my eye was continually drawn to one particular painting, and I couldn’t resist expressing my admiration for it.  It wasn’t a beautiful landscape or an amazing sunset or mists rolling across a lake, – it was a small section of Regent Street in Newtownards, with a pedestrian crossing and a big dark shadow, and some old, and entirely unremarkable buildings.  Thousands of people must walk past it every week.  Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off it!  Why?  Just because it made me feel that I was right there!  It had a ‘sense of place!’  It told me about the place, gave me a sense of ‘belonging’ to it, drew my mind visually into the picture. 

Here it is:-

Such an ‘ordinary’ scene, but look at the information packed into that image.  There’s a church at the right hand side, and beside the church a minibus is parked, the people can travel to the services by bus.  At the pedestrian crossing people can safely cross the road, and they aren’t wearing coats, so it’s a warm day.  There’s some small shops.  It’s a sunny day.  The strange shadows on the road are made by an Orange Arch – a structure only erected in Northern Ireland, and only in the month of July.  So it’s a sunny July day, in a town in Ulster.  Compositionally, the image is attractive too, framed between two trees, and with a good positioning of lines of convergence, the people walking give it a sense of motion.  It has lots of colour, light and shadow, contrast, foreground and background giving a sense of depth and space, and human interest aplenty.

It’s what is sometimes called ‘A Sense of Place.’  On a three day visit to the Lake District in Cumbria, England, I thought again about this painting.  The Lake District is a place of extraordinary natural beauty.  Many people will holiday there and will come equipped with mountain gear, walking boots and sticks, and for those armed with a camera or a half decent mobile phone camera, the visual rewards can be preserved.  The scenery is stunning; mountains, fells, rivers, lakes, forests, wild life, flora and fauna, – it all combines to make the Lakes a memorable place to visit and to make images.  Lakeland scenes are sold all over the world, and many of the local shops sell cards and gifts featuring famous and celebrated views.

However, I can’t climb mountains!  Heart procedures and atrial fibrillation make unusual activity like that a little difficult. But I still want to use my down time to make images, so what can I do?  My decision was influenced by the painting of Regent Street.  I would use my cameras to try to capture a ‘sense of place.’  In other words, I would go to wherever I could, in the streets and towns of the area, and ask myself, ‘What do I see?  What makes this place different from any other place, and how can I make an image that will somehow convey that sense of uniqueness?  What’s the architecture, the culture, the religion, the people, the weather, the occupations; the factors that make this area different from other areas, and how can I illustrate them in my photographs?