A Time for Place

This was the photograph of the day for me on Saturday. A few friends and I traveled to a nearby town, McMinnville, for a photowalk together. We were lucky and the weather cleared for us long enough to wander around the historic downtown for a little while.

We were heading back to the car when the contrast of purple and green caught my eye. I had to cross the street to investigate, discovering this awesome building with a series of vine-y trees (or tree-y vines) growing on the windows. I couldn’t wait to play with this one, editing and sharing the image on the drive home.

“This reminds me of Italy,” a couple of people commented on Facebook.

Really? I was a bit taken aback. This looks nothing like Italy to me. The materials, textures and colors are all wrong.

Then I wondered, maybe if this is a photo that really looks like a “Kat” photo, like many I had taken in Italy, and that’s what people were seeing. My “sense of place” coming through. Or, an alternate view, that photographing so much those two years I lived in Italy shaped my sense of place so strongly that I end up framing small Oregon towns the same way. (Or maybe it does look like Italy, and I just don’t see it.)

Either way, I have a sense of place. It comes through in my photographs. It grows and changes, but it’s there. It’s honed and shaped by the places I live in, work in, visit and photograph. You have a sense of place, too.

Do you want to find your sense of place? Join me for the 8-week eCourse, A Sense of Place, starting April 7. Registration is open now.

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