Kim Manley Ort Photography

Kim Manley Ort

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Unfolding your Inner Mystic, Artist, and Prophet

Unfolding your Inner Mystic, Artist, and Prophet

Theologian Matthew Fox says in his book on Thomas Merton, that each one of us is a mystic, an artist, and a prophet. That’s a pretty bold statement. Some of us might say we’re one of these. Many of us would say we’re not any of them, yet Fox states that not only are all three of these roles in us, but they all work together. Each plays an important part in the inner unfolding or becoming of self.…

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My Mentors in Seeing

My Mentors in Seeing

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Which Photographs have been Pivotal for You?

Which Photographs have been Pivotal for You?

Astonished at the Car Wash   The day I took this photograph at the car wash, a rather mundane place and task suddenly became a source of play with my camera. This is what a pivotal photograph does; it takes you to a new level, a new place, or offers a new insight. We are always changing, evolving creatures and every time we click the shutter we are transformed in some way. Yet, life is full of…

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How's your Visual Intelligence?

How’s your Visual Intelligence?

Visual Intelligence: “the ability to see what’s there that others don’t, to see what’s not there that should be, to see the positives and the negatives, the opportunity, the invention, the upside, the warning signs, the quickest way, the way out, the win.” ~ Amy E. Herman, Visual Intelligence: Sharpen your Perception, Change your Life You’d think that my visual intelligence would be pretty high…

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The Camera Teaches about Connection

The Camera Teaches about Connection

  I spent the summer of 1976 living with my Dad in Windsor, Ontario, a place I’d never lived before. He’d moved there a few months earlier and was able to secure me a job where he worked. Since I had no other options at the time, that’s where I went. I had a second job that summer, teaching figure skating part-time at the local arena. A few weeks after starting to teach, the skating club had a…

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The Habit of Pausing

The Habit of Pausing

Illustration by @jaykayortHello. It’s good to be back after taking a mini-sabbatical (or pause) from blogging during the month of July. I focused on family, writing, and the Adventures in Seeing workshop, where we practiced, among other things, in building pauses into our days. Why is this important? We need space in our lives in order to reflect and decide how to most effectively respond to what…

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Tasting Notes for Life

Tasting Notes for Life

Beer Sampler at The Exchange Brewery   In the Adventures in Seeing workshop, we do an exercise with food that is designed to awaken all of our senses, not just the visual one. The more our senses are heightened, the more present and more memorable the experience will be. In his fascinating book, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More than Human World, David Abram posits that…

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Life's a Blur

Life’s a Blur

Summer Planter   I have a dilemma. My camera is not working properly and a new one is not yet in the budget. I don’t know what to do – try to get it repaired, start setting aside money for the newer version or even more for a better version. When I’m in this liminal space, I need to let things sit for awhile and wait for the right answer to come. I don’t have any big trips coming up and I still…

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Leap into the Void

Leap into the Void

Today, I was reading an essay by Rebecca Solnit from her book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, where she tells about the artist, Yves Klein, shown leaping in the photograph above. It’s a startling photograph, taken in 1960. Solnit says that it was part of a larger piece of work, a new type of photograph, “a document of an artwork that was too remote, too ephemeral, too personal to be seen…

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Peony Love - Let Me Count the Ways

Peony Love – Let Me Count the Ways

Here I Come   An important exercise on perspective that I often give in my workshops is to spend time observing a subject and then take a minimum of 24 frames, the idea being that there are an infinite number of ways of seeing something. Some possibilities we can’t see until we start, but if we stick with it, moving past the point of boredom, we will find something new. At this time of year in my…

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Header

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Stephen Wilkes, A Relentless Collector of Magical Moments

Stephen Wilkes, A Relentless Collector of Magical Moments

Stephen Wilkes is a self-described “relentless collector of magical moments.” In this interesting, inspiring, and entertaining 12 minute video, he tells the story of how he came to doing this project, Day to Night, where he compresses a day’s worth of images into one. Photography can be described as the recording of a single moment, frozen within a fraction of time. Each moment, or photograph,…

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Thankful for Aging

  Today is my birthday, a milestone one I might add. If you read my blog, you know that I’ve been writing and thinking lately about how to live the third act of life, commonly known as retirement. As I enter this third act, my mantra moving forward comes from a fabulous book by Ashton Applewhite, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto for Aging. There are even more ways of getting from 60 to 90 as there…

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Okay

Some things that arrived:

The Supernatural season finale happened, marking the 12th consecutive year of the world being about to end.

The SNL season finale happened, marking the 41st consecutive year of people describing entire sketches and then saying “you just have to watch it.”

A Beauty & The Beast trailer came out. No spoilers but it looks like there are some chandeliers involved.

Steven Universe leaked some episodes but we didn’t watch them.

If anyone asks, we didn’t watch them.

But they were great.

But we didn’t watch them.

Some notable figures:

Bella Hadid is being pretty.

PewDiePie is being petty.

Hodor: Hodor.

Also:

Horoscopes: Mercury’s out of retrograde

Summer: The corner store’s out of Gatorade

Glitter: Have you heard about this stuff?

Some blogs:

Why I Deleted Your Game’s PR Email (@whyideletedyourgamespremail​) is the game version of

Why I Deleted Your Band’s Promo Email (@whyideletedyourpromoemail​). PR people say the darndest things.

Also Fifth Harmony (@theofficialfifthharmony​) has a Tumblr. All five of them! One tumblr! What a deal.

Titanic (1997) Dir. James Cameron:

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Saturday Blues

You know how some moments are indelible in your memory and you’re not sure why? I remember going to a conference about ten years ago and someone read this from a book called A Field Guid to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit.  The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue edge of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun…

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The Benefits of Slow Walking

  A few weeks ago, I wrote about the benefits of wandering. Recently, at the meditation and writing retreat with Natalie Goldberg, we practiced slow walking before writing, and I mean very slow, at about a quarter of our regular speed. Natalie writes in her book, Thunder and Lightning, The walk is not a hike; I might just circumambulate my room. I probably look like a zombie, but I’m not in a…

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Bowing to Life through a Photograph

Bowing to Life through a Photograph

  During the meditation and writing retreat at Upaya Zen Center, we spent much of the day in silence. We could speak at dinner if we chose to, but breakfast and lunch were always in silence. During this time, we acknowledged others and the spaces we inhabited with a deep bow, palms touching as if in prayer.

There is something very respectful about this type of bow. It’s not done in deference to…

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