Tag: Love

Photography

The Practice

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

I follow a writer and influencer named Maxpein on X.

The curated posts always raise the bar,

but this one vibrated with beauty and poetry.

Without force, I am simply suggesting

tune in – the time is now.

Integrate your tools into your being.

Practice meditation without music, incense & oils.

Practice opening your heart without cacao or chocolate treats.

Practice multidimensional sight without plants.

Practice yoga without a mat.

Practice ceremony without feathers, guitars & drums.

Practice clearing without sage.

Practice enhancing, amplifying and protecting without crystals.

Practice without any aids…

just You and the expanded You.

Practice conversing without convincing.

Practice being without doing.

Practice feeling without analyzing.

Practice experiencing without criticism.

Practice listening without projecting.

Practice thinking without a story.

Practice speaking without parroting.

Practice seeing without lights.

Practice dancing without a DJ.

Practice getting there without GPS.

Practice creating without a laptop.

Practice connecting without a phone.

Practice Love without conditions.

Practice. ~ Kamau Abayomi

Dorothy Perry is a photographer of family happiness. Contact her here.

Consciousness · Creativity · Energy · Manifesting · Photography · Self-Development · Song Of Triumph · Spirituality

Singled Out

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

ALWAYS show

the vision of the types of photographs

you desire to make.

Your photograph with your optimistic energetic signature

lives in the internet ‘ether’ for years,

attracting for years as well,

and should be both your best

and your choice.

Dorothy Perry is a Chicago portrait photographer

of family portraits and happiness. Contact her here.

Consciousness · Creativity · Dorothy Perry · Energy · Photography · Practice · Relationship · Song Of Triumph · Vision

Laughter In My Soul

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

This is a reprint of the article “About Life” by Napoleon Hill.

Life, you can’t subdue me because I refuse to take your discipline too seriously.

When you try to hurt me, I laugh — and the laughter knows no pain.

I appreciate your joys wherever I find them;

your sorrows neither frighten nor discourage me,

for there is laughter in my soul.

Temporary defeat does not make me sad.

I simply set music to the words of defeat and turn it into a song.

Your tears are not for me, for I like laughter much better, and because I like it,

I use it as a substitute for grief and sorrow and pain and disappointment.

Life, you are a fickle trickster — don’t deny it.

You slipped the emotion of love into my heart

so that you might use it as a thorn with which to prick my soul —

but I learned to dodge your trap with laughter.

You tried to lure me with the desire for gold,

but I have fooled you by following the trail which leads to knowledge instead.

You induced me to build beautiful friendships —

then converted my friends to enemies so you may harden my heart,

but I sidestepped your figure on this by laughing off your attempts

and selecting new friends in my own way.

You caused men to cheat me at trade so I will become distrustful,

but I won again because I possess one precious asset which no man can steal —

it is the power to think my own thoughts and to be myself.

You threaten me with death, but to me death is nothing worse

than a long peaceful sleep, and sleep is the sweetest of human experiences

— excepting laughter.

You build a fire of hope in my heart, then sprinkle water on the flames,

but I can go you one better by rekindling the fire — and I laugh at you once more.

You have nothing that can lure me away from laughter,

and you are powerless to scare me into submission.

To a life of laughter, then, I raise my cup of cheer!

Laughing all the way, I celebrate your own Songs of Triumph in portrait form. Contact me here.

Consciousness · Creativity · Dorothy Perry · Energy · Photography · Practice · Relationship · Song Of Triumph · Vision

Gunslinger

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

My partner of five years decided to tell me

that the last five years were a total lie.

Imagine learning someone waited patiently for years

for the best moment to break your heart and trust in others.

A seismic jolt to the core of me

at a time I was happiness on two legs, ecstatic at my first solo show.

Now with the years and intimacies of memories colored and changed by betrayal,

No picture I see can be trusted.

But by deleting these photos on Facebook, I am also deleting the visible signs to me of my own moments and growth.

I decided to take my stand and reclaim the energy around my photographs.

Though he is in them, the ones I like are MINE,

and energy is always returned to me whenever I see it again.

In meditative renaming, I speak to remembering the high level of what I gained, evidenced, and celebrated,

reclaiming it for good, and returning it to me.

I call it my Song of Triumph, and I seek to keep this positive version of events

in my conversations going forward.

During my show’s run, I visited my photos and smiled and sang in the hallways, looked and spoke lovingly to the artwork, talked in words of happiness and joy,

felt good all up and down those hallways.

I took photos of my happiness and gratitude

at what had occurred and manifested visibly so quickly in my life.

I had wanted to have a show downtown (I did) in a beautiful old historical church,

with a show I had wanted to display for many years.

And no matter who tried to hate on it – some closer proximity than others –

it was beautiful and memorable.

I am reminded of the Old West idea of a gunslinger.

The guy has such a vibe that everyone tries him;

everywhere a stranger stepping up to challenge him

with “Who Do You Think You Are?” energy.

In this case, this feeling is also accompanied by

“Knock You Off Your High Horse” to put a plan into action.

My strength and superpower is that ever since I was a young girl

I have possessed a very strong natural psychic presence

and deal with “Who Do You Think You Are?” energy like the air I breathe

throughout school, travelling, and very odd spontaneous encounters with those triggered by my mere presence every day.

Connected to love and witnessed by God every day for the purity of my intentional heart,

My experiences dealing with envious evil eye ego diva drama energy

stems from constant Divine connection

to this assured inner self

who answers “Who Do You Think You Are?” with a quiet glance.

My little ‘sparkler’ awakened by my vulnerable questions

is a firecracker in my daily life,

moving out all the nonsense people

wanting and wasting her Dorothy’s valuable energy.

God bless my intuition through Spirit

and release of attempts to connect into my energy

as oftenandoftenasoftenandoften

and from WHOM as often as needed.

May every memory

entangled in emotional betrayal

be transmuted through Spirit

into forgiveness, healing, and light.

With obsidian in my pockets,

laughter in my eyes, and love in my heart,

I am dancing back into my life

whether you see me or

just hear about me from a distance.

“Just because you lost me as a friend, doesn’t mean you gained me as an enemy. I’m bigger than that, I still wanna see you eat, just not at my table.” ― Tupac

Dorothy Perry specializes in personal portraits imbued with deep feeling. Contact her here.

Creativity · Photography · Practice · Vision

Sane Spaces

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

“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!

It occurred to me that I had made an art show

that successfully created a zone of energy.

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.

This show working with vibration worked beyond my expectations,

and created an idea for future exhibitions, rich with potential.

Dorothy Perry can be contacted here.

Photography · Practice · Vision

Better With Age

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

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.

Creativity · Vision

A Teeny Tiny Love Story

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

A ring. And a pocket knife.

Two things I held dear because of the people who wore them.

Today, though, I had misplaced the knife, and was quietly tearing my house apart looking for it.

Although I was not saying I ‘lost’ it (since I could not bear to think that I might have lost it), I was saying “I’ll find it,’ an affirmation that sets my inner ‘hunter’ in motion.

Looking in a bag of mismatched earrings and old jewelry, I found the school ring from Aurora University my mom wore on her pinkie finger with pride all her life.

Mom went back to school after raising five kids, to become a teacher of other people’s kids. She was literally an ‘old school’ educator – she went from mimeographs to copy machines: no computers at that time. I remember our garage filled with crates of workbooks, paper, art supplies and decorations we would lug into her newly painted classroom each August.

My mom taught third grade in the Aurora Public Schools because she said they still had some cheerfulness and innocence in them. (By the time she retired, that was no longer the case, sad to say.) She was one of those teachers that parents would thank when they saw her in the store, whose kids waved and hugged her when she saw them in public.

Like a lion tamer, she did not show any weakness or fear while she was in the cage.

How great it felt to see someone who sat in the audience watching OUR recitals and performances, sitting on stage in her graduation cap and gown, watching all the people who came to see HER. At that time she was the only older person I had ever seen going to college, and it made a powerful impression on me.

My Dad was a working-class man who carried a pocketknife; and his little silver pocketknife was in his pants pocket or on the dresser his entire life. My dad was a quiet man (you’d be that too with six girls!) but though he was a bit of a loner, he did traditional Dad Things: tending his front lawn, grilling, and watching the Wide World of Sports in his pajamas – especially Pro Bowling (he was an expert bowler.)

He was not as big a book reader as my mom, but when he studied something that interested him, he made notes, studying what he had done and refining the process, drilling down on technique to create something that was distinctly his. This silver pocketknife was his lifelong possession, and still seemed to hold his energy.

So today with Mom’s ring in my hand, I really wanted to find where I had put Dad’s knife. Bags, boxes, drawers, bowls, under beds, in chairs, each time the guess came up empty, “I’ll find it” put new wind in my sails.

And suddenly, I am led to a new direction, a new area, and the box where it was nestled.

Not for me, but for his companion of over 50 years, whose remains live in a small bag of ashes in my home.

Placing the two objects gently together caused a deep rush of feeling and memories for all the things I loved about them both,

and I said, “Hi, Mom and Dad” like I was greeting them in person.

So while some people keep photos of their parents to remember them,

I am keeping the mana of my parents as they were in life – together.

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.  

Consciousness · Counterintuition · Creativity · Practice · Vision

Running Start

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

In areas of my life, I sometimes think of a classic idea in cartoons:

the hero or main character runs off a cliff and continues to keep running in air – as long as they don’t look down.

The concept of following one’s own path has something of that same slightly unreal feeling at first. But instead of anticipating a fall, I believe my path will carry me over the chasm to the other side and keep on going.

I have a mind that wants to extrapolate and guess all the combination of possibilities beforehand. It serves me well, but sometimes I have to step out on faith, and follow the decision to reveal myself publicly as a photographer who uses intuition and psychic sensitivity freely in my work and in my life.

I work for myself, so when I feel tense or anxious, I “reboot” by reading something short, simple and inspirational.

For ten years a beautiful book of meditations called “The Language of Letting Go” has been my friend when I feel crowded by a workday of too many calls, tasks, or demands on my time.

There have been newer versions with new affirmations as she continues to write and evolve, but this edition from 1990 continues to be my personal favorite.

Today’s entry referred to consideration of the idea that what we are learning at work often reflects and resonates to the things we are working out in private life. My issues of clearer communication with my clients can echo my issues of effective communication with my family.

Issues of establishing policies and boundaries with my clients can reflect where I place my boundaries with my loved ones–or where to place them in new relationships.

Issues of money, sexuality, childhood, self-esteem, fear of failure (or fear of success) can still appear at the most inopportune times. But they have less power to keep me off-balance all day as in years past. And I can tell immediately when something doesn’t feel right with me…and why.

So I welcome my visitors from the past, and redefine them with physical modalities like EFT and my eye exercises. I have respect for the lessons they still have to teach.

More and more these days, I am seeing that where I want to be in my decisions, photography career, and life is over on the other side of that ‘leap of faith’.

Dorothy Perry is a Chicago portrait photographer specializing in custom family portraits, modern headshots, & personal branding for women and executives.

 Contact her for commissioned work here. Thank you.

Photography · Vision

Eye Contact

Dorothy Perry

Some kids will be in need of others adult help to manage their lives all their lives. Some will need to have coaches, practicing, extra encouragement to try something in unfamiliar situations, using social skills others take for granted.

Love makes everything grow!

And in my life, it was 100% worth it. Seeing my guy Artist with his graduating class is abundance in presence, representing years of adapting to continual change and independence in my life and his with optimism, patience, and gratitude.

I speak for all good things for the tremendous special ed teachers we have encountered in critical times through the educational system, helping me ask the questions and meet other parents traversing their children’s futures.

I say Thank You to finding these stellar souls in his journey into adulthood.

Dorothy Perry photographs warm moments in family life. Contact her here.

Photography · Practice · Vision

Walk in Beauty

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

I find beauty all around me.

I would love to find it for you, too.  

Portraits and events that capture life’s freshness

in spirited images.

Dorothy Perry sees things beautifully. Contact, here.