Flickr Photo of the Week, Everyday Creativity

This is my Flickr Photo of the week, from my Flickr contact, Spiced Coffee. The photo is titled "Dry Creek Area" and has this description: "I love the contrast of the mustard with the dark vines before the grape leaves come out." Yes, I love it too and so many of your other photos, Spiced Coffee! Try as I might I couldn't get this photo to appear any larger on my blog, but please click on the photo to see how awesome it really is.

Spiced Coffee lives in beautiful Sonoma County where one of her hobbies is photography. Her specialty is really rose photography. See her Flickr Set "100 Favorite Roses." and lots of other wonderful photographs.

This photo made me think about Dewitt Jones, a professional photographer, featured on the wonderful video Everyday Creativity which I've used several times in staff training. Dewitt is well known for his striking photos in National Geographic as well as his "Basic Jones" column in Outdoor Photographer. When he talks or writes about photographic technique, he is really talking about creativity...."Seeing the ordinary as extraordinary" and "finding the next right answer". If you aren't familiar with his work and writing, I'd encourage you to check him out, and even if you are, revisit for a booster shot of his thoughts on the creative process.

Recently, I was using a wool sweater I had fulled (felted) to make several successive items over a period of time for my Etsy store. (The orange sweater if you read my blog regularly). I had in mind to use all of the sweater, and I've come very close to doing just that. At the time, I did think about the message from Everyday Creativity as I was deciding what the next thing I would make would be. I think I manged to find several "right answers" in the process. I don't think of myself as an expert photographer by any means, so perhaps I should apply more of his lessons there, but I know that the messages about how to be creative in everything we do have stayed with me. And thanks, Spiced Coffee, for reminding me about Dewitt Jones.