Having thought about which ‘square mile‘ I would like to use, my first attempt at answering this is based on Littlehampton promenade.  I don’t have any connection with my own childhood, but it does with my children, step children and grandchildren and so I thought that maybe this is somewhere that we would all have memories of.

This particular stretch of promenade has changed enormously over the years and especially in the past 5 years, when the whole river side defences have been rebuilt.  I am interested in how people use the space, i.e. for a Sunday stroll, walk the dog, a playground and as this assignment is about childhood interaction with surroundings, I thought I might focus particularly how children use this space.

This set of photos were taken on a surprisingly warm and bright October Sunday afternoon.  With me were three of step children ranging in age from 16 – 14 and my sister and her two year old.  So this gave me an opportunity to watch how the different ages interacted with different spaces and objects.  Arun District council have spent quite a lot of money over the last few years installing art objects and community spaces therefore this small stretch of prom has a lot of things packed into it to do.

There is allegedly ‘the worlds longest bench’, an outdoor stage, a play park, and coffee shop designed by an award winning designer (affectionately known locally as ‘the rusty turd’!)

Having watched quite a few talks by National Geographic photographers, they always talk about the first shot being a ‘sense of place’ so I tried to take shots that might do that alongside the shots of the children interacting with objects they encountered.

I decided to use f/8 for all of the shots, as I felt I needed to keep both the foreground and background in focus because this is essentially about location and a connection with it. I kept the ISO at 200 as it was a fairly bright day but changed the focal length between 24 – 70 depending on the shot.

If I use these for the assignment, I think I will need to find a balance between showing ‘the place’ and how people interact with it.  I’m not sure if I should go back at different times of day or in different weather to show the changing nature of the area or if that’s too much bearing in mind I have to choose only 6 – 12 photos?

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further reflection, I am pleased that these photos could convey connection with the environment, but not that they have an impact on a person’s identity