Pretty? Yes. Creative? Probably Not.

So the assignment I gave my students last week was to capture South Dakota winter but to be "creative" in doing so. Of course, what complicates this assignment is what is meant by creative, though to me being creative as a photographer is partly being able to frame and capture something in ways no one else has. What has been submitted has been fun to see, though one of my favorites so far is a manhole cover photographed by a first year student named Tiffany. It doesn't show the beauty of our winters but that's what I like about it. (You should check out Tiffany's photo blog, by the way.)Anyway, I went out to see if I could do my own assignment. While there were amazing photo opportunities yesterday morning because of the frost, I'm afraid that creativity didn't abound. So today I present a pretty photo. But there's not much that is creative here. In fact, I just Googled "pine cones with frost" and I got 1.02 million results, some of which look a lot like my photo. I got 93,000 results when I searched for photos of "manhole covers with slush," but very few actually have slush. Can Google results be a partial measure of creativity?So ends my little discourse on creativity.