In A Different Light

Portrait of a Lady (with a really big forehead) 

On some days this is a nature blog with a little travel twist - other days it tends to gravitate towards a travel blog with a little nature twist. In almost every instance I like my blog to celebrate creativity - either that which mother nature renders with her slow, steady hand or...um, basically whatever I can come up with looking down the lens of my Canon 20D. Natural selection versus My selection -- either one will do in a blog pinch. 

Ah, but then are times like this week when work gets in the way forcing today's post to wander well outside the blogger box.  My blog has been stuck for an entire week on a wind-blown pyramid in Egypt in 2005 because I have been stuck in an underground ballroom in a make-believe world run by a mouse with big ears and suspenders in 2008. 

Let me tell you - this is my idea of hell - stuck in the dungeon of the most visited entertainment complex in the world with a staggering 25 million visitors per year.  And nowhere in this entire fantasy-land-run-amok-with-materialism is there anything with a semblance of "natural" or "nature" for that matter to celebrate in a blog post (keep in mind for a brief second in history I was number 59 with a bullet on the Nature Blog Network and my seven fans are rather demanding!)

So what does a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-absolutely-nothing Leo do stuck in an underground ballroom while both nature and his Canon 20D remain completely unavailable to him - he gets creative with what's available -- a computer, a couple of glamorous colleagues and an imagination that might make old Walt proud.

So, in lieu of the usual travel or nature posts, I present to you this collection of my beautiful, smart, saavy co-stars down here in the basement ballroom - photographed "in a different light" with the fun-house camera on my computer, artistically rendered by the "painterly" effects in my Photoshop CS3 and all done "whistling while we worked" in the true spirt of, ahem, Disney Magic.

Betty, Embracing Her Ugly

The Mona Lisa of Minneapolis (ya betcha!)

She Nose Her Wine

Paris at the Hilton

Pretty in Pastel

Throwing Witty Barbs

Chin-nook of the North

Yes, these are all real people --  as seen through the creative eye of...

Yours truly

(madly, deeply)

thanks for letting me out of the box!

Many thanks to these incredible women for participating in my creative whimsy and allowing their generous beauty to be seen in a different light: Kelly Egan from NYC, Pam Wagner from Minneapolis, Leslie Knopfler from Currituck County, NC, Nellie Lorenz from Los Angeles, Tonya Batty from NYC, Barb Blauman from Dayton, OH, Marianne Ranick from Northern California.