After creating and editing portrait images for a couple,
it is my practice to put them away and look at them later.
It allows time for different, new images to emerge.
This image is one I am exploring for my dual portrait series.
I love how these images capture a loving husband and wife as individuals
and as a romantic couple.
Dorothy Perry is a Chicago portrait photographer. Contact her here.
My website for a time had been with a company
that offers the ability to add and change things at will
without waiting for my webmaster to do it.
Today, in addition to changing ALL the fonts (!),
I had been tweaking the info on my contact form.
The item in question was in scheduling a screening call, to see if we clicked,
and to make an appointment to meet, so over a calmer, more relaxed time,
I could see them and strategize how to help.
Just contemplating the sentence that I could not discuss price before I understood the parameters of the project flooded my nervous system
with past memories of all the people that had done JUST THAT.
This suddenly seemed like a perfect metaphor
for the way I felt people were seeing me and my work,
and filled me with such a sudden, heated surge of memory,
I had to step away from the computer until I cooled down.
But instead of giving in to the part of me
that wanted to let them all ‘talk to the finger,’
I let myself finally feel all these emotions all the way through.
The common thread that ran through all of these incidents
was a lack of boundaries and ‘backbone’,
letting my easy-going nature be misinterpreted as weakness.
I am in a profession I love, and I want to continue to be in a profession I love.
So it is my responsibility to keep searching out the gaps in my protocols and policies,
and strengthen them so that hidden feeling does not steal joy
and cause me to become cynical or embittered.
Though these things have indeed happened,
each step today becomes the next one tomorrow.
I saw that my part in this is slower & more connected communication.
To not be rushed or in a hurry to close the deal.
To know that not everyone who wants my work is my ideal client.
To know my ‘deal-breakers’ and be able to stick to them. To listen to my gut.
And to keep a regular practice of ‘dusting the cobwebs’ that build up in the corners
so I am able to be ready, whatever happens,
with clean sensors in my cameras – and in me.
Dorothy Perry is a Chicago portrait photographer.
A valuable skill in our visually stimulating world
is relaxing your visual focus
(letting the eyes ‘go fuzzy‘)
when waiting or resting.
It rests more than your eye muscles:
it also gives the ever-spinning
wheels of mind a rest,
and lets your intuition come through
to show you something new.
Dorothy Perry is a Chicago portrait photographer.
Benefit: Helps develop a ‘wider gaze.’ Useful as a daily practice. Helps to become more aware of photograph-able things happening in moving or crowded situations.
This is effective when coupled with deep, steady breathing to help stay creatively effective in highly emotional or moving situations.
Step backwards.
Step back, as if moving your body. Make the movements to step back, sensing everything: temperature, your pulse, your breathing, the fabric of your clothes, your muscles in your knees and feet.
Step back again. Keep stepping back until you feel a release of breath, a relaxing. Keep breathing, steadily, deeply.
Watch without naming colors, reading words, or signs.
Open eyes wider, open ears, open nostrils, relax jaw.
hold it briefly, lightly, gently.
Gradually have all senses open at the same time.
hold it briefly, lightly, gently.
Open your pores, feeling in all fingers and toes, all at the same time.
hold it briefly, lightly, gently.
Continue to hold in that middle. surrender. breathe. go deeper with whatever your body feels. hold it briefly, lightly, gently.
Take a deeper breath. Come back to your focus gently.
Please write if this exercise works for you: I would love to hear if this helps you imbue your creativity and photography with deeper emotional content.
Dorothy Perry is a Chicago photographer specializing in modern portraits. Contact her here.
