Thanks to Alfredo for this photo of his daily commute to work in Mexico, from his beautiful photoblog. In my Second New Year’s Resolution post, I asked how readers find time for creativity in the middle of a busy schedule – here’s his reply from the comments:

“My creative outlet is photography. I started a photoblog almost two years ago and soon found myself out of pictures to post and out of time to shoot. I started carrying my camera all the time and soon I was taking pictures of my daily commute, from my car. It has turned out to be an interesting, often unexplored subject matter for photography and kept the pictures and the posts coming.”

It’s an ingenious solution to the problem of finding time for creativity, and he’s taken some stunning pictures. Look at the In Transit category to see the commuting photos, but do explore the rest of his blog, it’s a treasure-trove.

We had an e-mail discussion about how scenes that are familiar and everyday to us can seem exotic and inspiring to others – although I doubt whether the views from my trip on the Docklands Light Railway would compare with the colours and sights in Alfredo’s photos.

“What you say about familair vs. exotic resonates very much. I don’t know how deep you want to go into it in your post, but one interesting thing about most of my work is that I’m a Venezuelan living in Mexico, so everything I see here IS very exotic to me. I’ve been here for four years already and find myself constantly amazed at what I see everyday. Of course, Mexico is a very colorful place, but I think there is also an internal excercise in keeping oneself permeable to what’s around.”

I love that phrase, “keeping oneself permeable to what’s around” – a good reminder for all of us, regardless of our creative medium.