Nature encompasses us. It cradles us humans in a surround of smells, sights, and sounds. Even when we try to concrete over fields and forget nature, a daisy pushes through pavement to remind of nature. Or the river may rise and seep and sweep through the buildings.

We should remember our place among nature. A walk through fields or woods is full of colours and flowers, the rustle of a breeze among tree leaves, the whistle of a bird, the smell of spring flowers or autumn leaves. The more we stop to look, the more we see, hear, and smell.

The camera can only capture part of this experience, but these focused images are to remind us of the fresh feel of a breeze lifting your hair and fluttering through the leaves, how soft a moist cap of a mushroom feels, glow of winter sun on a lake.

I remember being nine, Alice-banded hair and red plaid trousers, clutching my first camera and shooting frame after frame of the lambs in a field – viewed over a ditch and through a fence in an urban park in Holland. I still have photo albums packed with pages of those woolly dots in white-edged, slightly mauve colour prints. I treasure the black-and-white crocuses, the ducks on the canal, the memory of the wonder of a child at views we adults have forgotten are not mundane.

We are rich in Ireland - rich in being able to leap the ditch and dodge the hedge and feel with bare toes the gentle heat of sun-warmed soil on a summer’s day. We are rich to be able to climb a mountain and admire a green view below. It is a privilege to lie in a meadow and watch the waving heads of grass against a light blue sky. Even to look closely at the sparkling stars of the ordinary dandelion ready to let its seed float anywhere on the wind. Turn up your face and feel the small massage of staccato rain drops on your face. And think about the richness of Ireland.

-Sasha Bosbeer