Tag: Practice

Creativity · Photography · Practice

What’s In A Name?

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

There is something glorious about saying, ” I created something that has my name on it.”

Not only your signature, but your standards.

The something you want to reflect your subtlety and style;

The thing that has your energy in it.

I am a photographer known for my attention to the feelings of things,

and early on, had lovely but shortlasted creative names like Dorothy Perry Portrait, Dance of Life and Double Happiness.

I also obsessed about fonts, but that is another story for another day.

Truly an airy and impractical soul, I did not learn about the value of domain names until I needed one: mine. Little did I know how hard it would be.

In those years, my name in combination with photography was taken off the board.

There are a number of Perry surnamed photographers as well as the other nice Dorothy Perrys living all over the United States,

and names that I desired were limited by others claiming all the variations of the names for profiles and screen names as well.

So now as I locate the threads everywhere to be rewoven back into my nest,

I will produce, post and control the quality of what I want to write here from my home base. THIS ONE.

The one that has my name on it.

Dorothy Perry is a Chicago photographer of peoples’ personal lives and celebrations. Questions or commissions through the Contact Page here.

The Suggestion
Consciousness · Energy · Perry Portrait Art · Photography · Practice · Vision

The Suggestion

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

Yesterday I went to our neighborhood laundromat for the first time.

During the little banter you do at the counter, I asked for the bathroom key, and as he handed it to me, the owner told me to look out for the ghost in there.

With a straight face.

The act of suggestion and creating an image in another mind is a powerful energetic exchange. If you only knew how your words really affect and create all around you!

You better believe I THOROUGHLY searched the room for anything out of the ordinary. This restroom was a little larger than a bathroom, and the motion control light at the door was at a distance from the seat.

You would have this picture playing in your head when the motion sensor turned the lights off while you were in the room.

He couldn’t know that when I was 11 and away at camp the counselor scared me with a story so bad I was afraid of bathroom mirrors for years.

But as a grown @$$ woman I sang, laughed, and twirled the key above my head all the while I was there – and in leaving, asked if there was a ghost or unwanted energy, to leave the building and go in peace.

When I returned the key, the owner asked me if anything had happened, and said.”when the light goes off. the ghost grabs you by the throat” and made the gesture.

Did he believe there was a ghost? Was this a game? I can only have my impression of the interaction: he had a serious expression through it all.

But it was transmuted this time by my intention not to play along. I thanked him for warning me about it so I was prepared.

Interesting watching his expression change. I think I spoiled his fun a little. Or exorcised the ghost. Both situations are ok with me.

Look at the stuff that scared you when you were a kid in the light of day. Look and keep looking to reduce the energetic ‘hold’ it has on you. No shame if you need to have a blanket to peek from! But see it, laugh at it, demystify it.

And be free of it.

To Your Ever Abundant Health, Dorothy ✨☕💐

Independence Day
Practice · Vision

Independence Day

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

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 Albatross
Creativity · Practice · Vision

The Albatross

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

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.

Eleven-Eleven Alice
Creativity · Practice · Vision

Eleven-Eleven Alice

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

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.

Gold vintage Volvo 240 GL sedan parked in urban neighborhood.

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.

The Power Of One
Creativity · Energy · Perry Portrait Art · Photography · Practice

The Power Of One

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

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.)

He Who Walks Three Ways

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.

Putting It Out There
Practice · Vision

Putting It Out There

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

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.

Sane Spaces
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!

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.

Better With Age
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.

See Here Now
Dorothy Perry · Perry Portrait Art · Photography · Practice

See Here Now

Dorothy PerryLeave a comment

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.