Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.
~Rumi
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.
The stereotype of the drugged, drinking or skirt chasing artist personality creates a ‘buzz’ and sells tickets, but actually creates formerly creative people that struggle to imagine and create to push out artwork: to “phone it in” and burn out.
Truth be told, it’s hard enough to find time, energy and artistic inspiration and create without also having the albatross of addictive behaviors around your neck.
The creative impulse is impulsive, and the ‘golden hours’ of activity and creative flow can get hijacked in bad habits and drugs, sometimes never to return.
My message to other artists is that success is not all it seems from the outside. To be successful in you have to turn off the phone, be physically healthy, spend time alone to know your mind, be independent of the crowds and fashions of the time.
To know your mind is to accept yourself, warts and all.
To accept yourself, you have to be in your body, to know when you are happy, tired, engaged, on auto pilot, or fully 100% here. And in time, to be grateful of the subtleties and beauty of your life more and more of your day.
Perhaps that will be what matters most: becoming a person that can experience and enjoy the steps of your journey.
Dorothy Perry is a photographer and a smiling happy warrior of awareness. Contact her here.
The art of photography is the continual practice of observing things with a unique vision. But expanding and refining that vision is a creative challenge as well.
We go about daily life distracted by our phones and internal chatter, and mental filters created by our pre-conceived ideas of reality and what should be in it.
Our eyes function with the help of a sensing device called a reticular activator: it picks out the things that we have chosen (or have allowed ourselves) to see.
We all have had the feeling of suddenly noticing things that have been around us all the time – when we allow ourselves to see it, then we can. Instruct your reticular activator to pick out yellow trucks, and they will seem to be everywhere. Rare or uniquely colored objects might take longer, but then your eyes will ‘pick them out’ in advertisements, signs, and packaging.
It also excels with misplaced objects, giving hot/cold feelings or images that ‘suddenly’ guide you to the location. Instead of saying that you ‘lost’ something, say, “I’ll find it’ instead. This encourages your sensing to locate the object that much faster.
And in some cases, it can actually set in motion and create what you desire.
My favorite memory of using this Manifesting skill was the decision that I wanted to own a specific type of car – a vintage Volvo 240 GL.
It happened so rapidly, that the process of seeing to owning that exact type of Volvo took 48 hours, start to finish: a perfect storm of coincidences and circumstances.
I walked out of the Brown Line train station at the moment that this very type of car drove past. It had a “For Sale” sign visible in the side window. The driver got gas at a station across the street. The price was an amount I had available in the bank.
I got to witness this cascade of coincidences in action, and had the exact type of car I desired by that evening. And it was the first in a series of terrific Volvo 240s I have owned – my latest has its own Instagram page! https://www.instagram.com/volvocago/
Creativity energy creates the space and circumstances for success to happen. And to keep my inner eyes working, I shift between different types of perceptive techniques regularly so I have a neutral state of mind that can exist for creative focus, letting go, or just enjoying ‘no mind’ itself.
I call this “Eleven-Eleven Alice”, because I do it at 11:11 and it uses a picture idea from Alice in Wonderland, the illustration of her expanding in a small room.
I also am going to do imaginating (mentally picturing an object in all five senses) to briefly step outside the box.
Before the start, sit quietly, and gently relax your lower jaw. Relax all the muscles descending down your body. Settle down into its weight.
Feel the top of your head touch the ceiling: feel your hair against the ceiling. feel the texture of the trim, the coolness of the paint. Get big so your cheeks, ears press against the windows.
At the same time, expand your body and lower torso. Feel both shoulders widening and filling up all four corners of the room. Feel the smoothness and coolness of the painted wall against your skin. If there is furniture, feel its material as you expand. You are as wide as the room and growing.
Move your vision to other rooms, your lower torso going down several floors. I imagine my feet touching the ground three floors down, my head above my building, slowly looking around. Feel your immensity.
Gaze around as though your body is gargantuan: a full buildings’ tall. Take giant breaths. In this state, be grand as you feel this gigantic self.
Then come back slowly, gently back down into your body. Stay neutral, eyes soft focused. If you can, let more time pass and feel this nice vibe.
Expanding and enlarging the self allows you to step out of your mind and daily worries, calms the chatter, and is something you can enter and re-enter in different circumstances. Widen yourself when you are sitting on a bus or in a car, practice in public when you are sitting in an office, be BIG when you are talking to someone.
There are times I do combine it with an intention to let things go, or to send out an energy of happiness to everyone in this surrounding vicinity.
But most often I feel its usefulness in creating a fluid, more creative state of mind –
and 11:11 happens twice every day.
If ‘Eleven-Eleven Alice’ becomes a favorite for you, I would love to hear it.
Dorothy Perry photographs sensitive people and intimate events. Contact her here.
One of the most read posts I sent out on my WooWay personal newsletter mailing, called The Internet is Forever (Asterix) involved dealing with loss of the photographs I took for the Chicago Reader when the newspaper issues were digitized.
In this, I wrote about my discovery that examples of my early photography career with the Chicago Reader were no longer visible in their online archives…anywhere.
Due to size or intellectual property issues, they imported the articles, but did not include the photographs from earlier editions of the paper.
The email started with dealing with the reality of the situation – but at the end* celebrated the various soft and hard skills learned with the experience.
Fast forward nine months, and through the wonders of Instagram, I get a ‘ping’ from an artist group I photographed in 1992, updated in a Gossip Wolf column. (the article here.)
After I did a quiet appreciative happy dance, I decided to update the story. In addition to the pleasant surprise in being led to one of my photos, it was also a little reminder to me to give life’s irritations or obsessions up to the body’s wisdom, and let things happen as they will.
*Looking with the attitude that there is nothing to panic about or ‘fix’ is a mindset that allows for quiet personal wonder, delight, and awe, even within an ordinary day.
I found that by not fighting and resisting and replaying the memories accompanied by emotions that would suddenly float in and make themselves felt, they changed or would leave by themselves. No examining or selecting anything for further review, I stayed present with no judgement as to what came up, and it would just evaporate.
Practice presence in all different types of situations to have the grounded feeling of being inside your body. Feel the heat through your fingers, feel your toes against the floor, use your senses. Even if at times you conduct your day on autopilot, make time to connect with yourself through the day.
I invite you to subscribe to my ‘Woo Way’ newsletter for intuitive counterintuitive strategies to help sense the world around you at your best. The sign up link is here. I look forward to meeting you there.
Dorothy Perry is a Chicago photographer of peoples’ personal lives and celebrations. Contact her at perryportraitart@gmail.com or here. Thank you.
The most valuable lesson I have learned from my mentors is that
A portrait has to be framed.
so your children can grow up
seeing their lives celebrated in picture form
in art they see around their home.
Dorothy Perry is a Chicago photographer of family portraits, modern headshots and personal milestone celebrations. Contact her here.
“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.
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.
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.
Paraphrased from Philippians 4:8:
“…Whatever is true, whatever is noble,
whatever is right, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable,
— if anything is excellent or praiseworthy —
think about such things.”
My focus as a witness and photographer
is to bring a good vibe into the event
and capture its effect on others.
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.
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.
