Though Seamus McGarvey says he’s “overjoyed” to be honored at the Oscar Wilde Awards, the cinematographer (“Atonement,” “High Fidelity”) prefers to be known as a filmmaker — not necessarily an Irish filmmaker.

“Imagination is not something that comes from a place or a country,” says the Armagh native. “But I wouldn’t deny that growing up in a war zone in the ’70s at the height of the Troubles didn’t affect me. It made me aware of the epic in the everyday.”

McGarvey has worked everywhere from the savannas of Botswana to the streets of Chicago, but it’s the bleak, gray landscapes of the British Isles — like the ones he captured in director Tim Roth’s “The War Zone” — that speak to him the most.

“Usually in film you’re praying for good weather, and here we actively sought stormy weather,” he says. “I love it when a landscape is brooding and when the landscape can actually mean something in terms of becoming a character in the story.”

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