Photographer
“I’m going to miss this show.”
This student used to come to the UIC African American Art Gallery
to do her home work and study along with other students:
making art, practicing yoga,
and on Finals week, even eating breakfast there!
For four months, 11 photographs in the AACC gallery
imbued the space with energy, serving as an artistic ‘power station’ –
and creating a room that felt really nice to rest in.
Alchemist and Photographer Dorothy Perry can be contacted here.
I have a studio photograph of my parents as a middle aged married couple,
a posed portrait with her best outfit on, leaning on my dad’s back,
both with pleasant, fixed smiles.
This is the same pose we always have of ourselves through school, printed in the yearbooks, and remembered by friends.
But years later the children have only these photographs to recall their fathers, mothers, and beloved partners. What is remembered of their sparkle and vitality?
It is no accident the photograph of my parents my sisters share the most is one of them as childhood sweethearts in their youth and energy, graceful in the naturalness of that candid, immediate moment.
And it is kismet that years later, I find it is the seed of my creative technique in my search to capture real emotions for the romantic parents I love to photograph.
It stems from my desire to capture livelier, more engaged and energized portraits of mothers and fathers, photographing parents as the childhood sweethearts and lifelong soulmates they are.
My portraits are moments between two people in love, showing tenderness and affection. Glowing from true feelings inside for life and each other.
This intimate portrait is a gift that keeps on giving.
Dorothy Perry is a Chicago portrait photographer specializing in custom family portraits, modern headshots, & personal branding for women and executives.
Contact Dorothy here.
Thought + desire = reality.
This is my solo exhibition of artwork displayed in a beautiful Chicago church.
100% an artist’s dream until I added imaginating: the art of visualizing in 360 degree detail.
I walked the hallways, looked at my pictures like a visitor, touching the frames, greeting guests.
I said (and felt) the emotion of thanks and gratitude while I was doing it.
How long? Sometimes it takes a bit. You must be specific. Down to the smallest details, yet not have to have it in stone. I don’t know how else to describe it.
When you begin to have experience and success with smaller goals, it can appear in shorter amounts of time.
When I deliberately concentrated on it was when my partner was working on exhibiting. We spoke of details, frames, deadlines.
Then out of the blue, the thought formed in this exact sentence,
“I would like to have a show, too.”
And my thoughts were set in motion in this manner.
Within two months, I learned one of my photographs was included in a show of female blues artists in Evanston.
I enjoyed the reception experience and happiness of seeing my art on the wall.
Months later came a request to see if I was interested in exhibiting here.
My own show.
And I was able to display artwork from a personal project
that had given me a lot of happiness in making it.
Thinking in the way of imaginating begins by deciding what you want
and then creating a clear mental picture of it.
Then, you must keep that image in mind continually,
like a port toward which you are sailing a ship.
SEE IT in detail, and add your emotions: happiness, contentment, excitement.
FEEL the weight, shape, or heat.
BREATHE IN the scent of what you are touching, and
HEAR the clink or creaks of materials or background noise.
Gently add one by one until ALL senses are participating.
Our minds can do it with our eyes open. No rituals, chants, or changes in breathing are needed.
Each time you imaginate the picture, let the feeling linger.
Pay attention to the directions and choices in your daily life that come your way.
These ‘random’ things direct the next steps towards your goal.
Advance your dream with preparation and confidence (get passport updated, check out class tuition, go see the house)
and feelings of gratitude for what you have.
Interestingly enough, the solutions that come will have the unique circumstances that you need. This is also something that you can request.
We all can do this, but we have been taught many patterns of behavior that suppress our natural inclinations in creativity, curiosity, and play.
This manner helps create a personality who has tenacity, faith, persistence and focus on their goals.
You can make some of your dreams and desires come true. May you have God’s blessings of abundance over your life.
Chicago personal photographer Dorothy Perry creates portraits and art with the distinctive signature of energy. Contact her for commissions or exhibitions here.
Today I want to send out good vibes
to the people who come up against the gatekeepers.
We have to live in your world sometimes,
but there is another world, more brightly lit.
(paraphrased from Tales From The Darkside, ha ha.)
Actual real-world people
choosing and buying things that are beautiful.
So, boys and girls, consider the source (even if they say they are ‘experts’)
and keep making your art anyway.
Keep refining – and keep making – your art
not just for the acclaim, but also to make money.
To teach yourself how to be a person who CAN:
become braver, learn new skills,
speak to strangers, get cooperation, meet deadlines.
Become a problem solver. Become a visionary for others.
Photography created these skills and this personality.
But it turned out it had to fit into my life in the right place.
Maybe you will always have it be the other job, as it is for me.
But keep art making in your life. ✨
Like Vincent Van Gogh, Vivian Maier’s fame
came after her death.
That decision to bring her camera,
to record her life in photographs
and practice and misstheshot and have agooddaybutbadlight
and haveabadday andgetstubborn andcryandkeepcomingback
and hoping the light is good when she can get some time.
The seeing, taking the photo all one can do,
becomes the art. The making it that counted.
Even in normal days,
there are times of beauty
and opportunities for awed appreciation.
Pay attention. And have your camera with you.
I welcome the opportunity to create thoughtful portraits for discerning clients.
Questions and inquiries through my Contact page here.
I go online and Google myself sometimes, and saw an 2006 post from a fellow photographer, riffing on the theme of being a psychic photographer based on an ad I had written for my services. (To read the original post, click here.)
It was good-natured, but it stung a little that I had tried so carefully to describe what I did, only to have it be the butt of someone’s joke. And it apparently had still been smouldering, since it had caught my attention during a moment I had not expected.
I think to practice ones’ gift is to know that many times, it will be misunderstood.
The difference is that now I am choosing to see these kinds of situations with a mindset of appreciation for what it teaches – (even though I could not see it while it was happening.)
Some memories arise to a neutral, dispassionate view that acknowledges that yes, something happened, and despite potential for a cautionary tale, yes, it is done.
Others create laughter: I can take a deep breath and smile at challenges to my ego or my vanity. And others can be seen with compassion for a young person’s mis-reading of emotion and information.
When this comes up again in the Slideshow of my Mind,
I will choose to see and feel it differently.
I’ll bring a gentle, open, and curious self to those formative incidents,
especially ones that ‘ring up’ old memories or create unexpected charges of emotion.
I see it in the light of day,
the drama of the story dissolving.
I see it now for the best for everyone involved.
The energy of releasing old stories affects people differently.
Sometimes the act of getting it out happens quickly,
and other times, I have to let it work its way and have its say quietly,
as there is more under the surface that takes time to unfold.
The years since have created someone new:
Someone with a dream, even when another cannot see it (or see it yet.)
With that vision, even the irritations of life are welcomed for the ‘pearl’ created.
Dorothy Perry is a Chicago portrait photographer specializing in custom family portraits, modern headshots, & personal branding for women and executives. Contact her studio for commissioned work here.
Being a freelance photographer really has made me
a person who has had many varied experiences in my career.
Emphasis on the ‘varied’.
But they were experiences that taught me much
about the ‘soft skills’ of working with people,
even if it taught me what not to do the next time.
When I chose to use my intuitive senses in my daily life,
I did so as a photographer as well.
And the people who came into my life in personal and business ways
were people who tested me. Emphasis on the ‘test.’
Communication breakdowns, money issues, ego bruising experiences.
Only thing I can do is choose my reaction to it,
knowing that self-control is the master class
in releasing glamourous holds on me.
My brilliant energy and heart are part of my backbone now,
and I have strength and determination
as if a spark had lit the fire in me
to create something extraordinary for you
in my pictures of everything
whether you see it or not.
Dorothy Perry shoots clear, honest work, play and family images
that show the beauty of everyday life at its’ best.
Let’s meet through the Contact Page if we click.
The mind attracts the thing it dwells upon.
Dorothy Perry facilitates authentic, aware intimacy in relationships and evolving personal portraiture (It’s ALL in the eyes.) Mystic by birth, photographer by choice. Here.
“Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height.
Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches.
Happiness is like a tree going into the sky,
and sadness is like the roots
going down into the womb of the earth.
Both are needed,
and the higher a tree goes,
the deeper it goes, simultaneously.
The bigger the tree,
the bigger will be its roots.
In fact, it is always in proportion.
That’s its’ balance.” – Osho
I welcome the opportunity to create thoughtful portraits for discerning clients.
Questions and inquiries through my Contact page here.
Photograph,
not just for reels,
but for real.
Enjoy your present. Contact Dorothy here.
