Saying Goodbye To A Good Old Friend – Kamloops Photographer Jo LeFlufy

I remember the first time I ever saw him. Tiny little black sausage body and big head with floppy little ears. He was in the box that he’d been found in – about five weeks old and completely alert. His little tail was wagging up a storm as he stood on his hind legs and put his two front paws – one black and one white – on the edge of the top of the box. I leaned down to let him see me and he licked my face from chin to forehead. When I reached in to scoop him up, he squealed like a piglet and squirmed nearly out of my hands until I blew in his face and he instantly calmed down and sniffed my face again, licking my nose. I knew instantly that I’d found my best friend for many years to come.

Today that friendship, which lasted nearly 16 years, came to an abrupt end and my furry bestie – a dog who has been with me through so many twists and turns in my life – breathed his last breath. I can’t say that I am devastated by the loss for I’ve suspected for a few months that he was on his way out, but I do feel the loss. I think Greg may have been hit the hardest by Dyogi’s passing as he hasn’t had to deal with the loss of many beloved pets and he really loved the Boss Dog Bulldozer (which is what Greg loved to call him).

Dyogi once ran 14 km down the highway from my place in Pineview Valley to my dad’s place in Valleyview. They found him hanging out in their front yard after dinner one night. It turned out that some free range bulls got into the yard and spooked him and once he started running, he must have kept going until he saw some familiar signs to follow. On another occasion he ran the opposite way, ending up in my backyard after I’d left him at my dad’s while I was away on vacation. My boyfriend was staying at my place and opened the back door to find the pooch sitting on the door mat. Where do dogs get their uncanny sense of direction anyway?

The third and final time he escaped the yard, he followed a female dog who was in heat (even though he was fixed at the time) who had walked by. I found him 10 hours later, on the other side of the river at a beach where I often took him to play. I ran into a man there who said he had seen Dyogi swim the river earlier that day and, when he made it across, he had shaken himself off, lay down on the beach with his head between his paws and had stayed like that nearly the entire day until I found him. The man told me that during the day, my dog would occasionally get up, play with a dog or two and then settle back down to wait.

After the river swimming incident, he never ventured far from the yard again. Three huge adventures must have been enough for him.

Yesterday morning, I took him and Juno to the beach. He spent the time roaming and sniffing and exploring and I thought to myself, Wow! Is this dog ever going to slow down??? This morning, he was making his way to the top of the stairs and he suddenly fell over and had a full-body seizure. All we could do was sit with him and comfort him until it was over and then rush him to the Vet. His system was shutting down and his liver wasn’t functioning anymore. He couldn’t stand up for more than a few seconds – such a change from yesterday when he looked like a puppy playing at the beach. The vet told us that the seizures would continue and he would continue to go downhill if we decided to let nature run its course. It was an easy decision to make the call to put him to sleep and it was obvious to me that he was perfectly okay with our decision. At one point, he just lifted his head from Greg’s leg and looked at me with tired eyes before dropping his head back down and wagging his tail. We sat together with him on the floor of the exam room while the vet shaved his leg and inserted a needle to send him off to the big sleep. And wouldn’t you know it, he slowly wagged his tail up until the last second of his life.

It was a nice feeling, sitting there with Greg and feeling Dyogi’s tail slowly thump against my leg until his heart stopped and he relaxed and we could say our goodbyes to the old guy. I feel very peaceful tonight and grateful that I was lucky enough to have such an amazing animal by my side for nearly 16 years.

He the first and only dog that I’ve had that belonged only to me and he was the best dog a girl could have ever asked for. Loyal. Happy. Protective. Intelligent. Easy going. Soothing. Comical. He has a wise and beautiful soul and I feel blessed to have had him in my life for as long as I did.

RIP Boss Dog. Happy travels on the other side

Good night my friends. I wish you all enough…

My Name is Joanne LeFlufy And There Is Nothing Fluffy About It. – Kamloops Photographer Jo LeFlufy

I had an exhibition booth at the big Bridal Fair at TRU on Sunday and, by the end of the day, it really struck a cord with me that so many people seem to have difficulty with my last name. Although my maiden name, Johnson, was, admittedly, much easier to decipher, I don’t think there is any rocket science involved in the name LeFlufy.

My last name is pronounced Leh Floofy. It’s not Luh Fluffy or Leh Flurry (yes, many people actually think there is a magical rrr sound in the name) or anything else. If it were Luh Fluffy (like a cute little, fuzzy bunny), there would be a u and TWO f’s in it – as in Luh Fluffy.

The other thing that makes me laugh about this is that my husband’s nickname is Fluf (pronounced Floof) and his friends have been calling him this for many years, yet many of them still pronounce our last name in the cute, fuzzy bunny way. WT?

I hope this clears up the confusion for all of you and I really hope that I won’t have to spend the rest of my life correcting people when they pronounce our name incorrectly. If this happens, I may just have to change my name back to Johnson and avoid all the hassle…just kidding Gregory!!!

Pregnancy Dreams – What The Heck Is That All About? – Kamloops Photographer Jo LeFlufy

In the last month, I have been having a steady stream of bizarre and often frightening dreams unlike any I have ever had before. I have never had hormone-induced dreams before and, let me tell ya, they are CRAAAAAZY! I thought it would be an interesting idea to keep a journal of all of my pregnancy dreams and, since some of them are so bizarre, I thought I should share them so you can shake your heads and wonder, along with me, if I’m turning into some sort of whack job!

Here are the most bizarre of the bunch so far:

• The Grand Canyon. I was cruising along the edge of the GC in a four door sedan with no doors. Our old man dog, Dyogi, was sitting in the passenger seat beside me. I wasn’t just driving along the edge, though. I was actually driving ON the edge, with the driver’s side tires on solid ground and the passenger side tires hanging in the air. The radio was playing Happy Birthday Sweet 16 by Paul Anka and it was ridiculously hot outside. I decided to drive faster to generate some more wind to cool us off, but at one point, I hit a bump and the car tilted downwards. I watched in complete horror as Dyogi slid slowly off the seat and out of the car, falling into the canyon. Then I watched as his body bounced off the walls and his bones crunched and he yelped until he finally hit the bottom in a bloody, crumpled heap. I sat there suspended in the car for what seemed forever until I turned the wheel and drove down the side of the canyon (apparently my car tires were very sticky) until I reached the bottom and made my way to Dyogi’s body. He was still alive and he looked up at me and whined with the most pitiful, heart-wrenching look in his eyes and then he died right in front of me. GREAT DREAM. I woke up sobbing and practically ran to the living room to make sure he was still alive and okay. He was just fine, of course.
• Animal Neglect. In this dream, Greg and I had bought another house and we had moved all of our belongings and most of our animals to our new home, but we had left two guinea pigs in their cages in the basement, thinking we would come back for them later that day. (As an aside, we don’t own guinea pigs, so I have no idea where this came from). A month later, while I was sitting in the living room of our new home, I suddenly realized that we had completely forgot to go back and get the little piggies. I ran outside, hopped in my old Toyota truck and spent hours trying to reach the other house, with thoughts of them going through a starvation/dehydration horror while we went about our merry lives. I drove and drove and drove and could never seem to get more than a block or two from our new house. I was sobbing and hating myself for being so thoughtless and careless with helpless animals lives and, the longer I drove, the worse the guilt and the pain in my heart became until I finally woke up, sobbing once again, and ran to the bathroom to puke my guts out. I know that there is no way that I would ever neglect an animal, so I have no idea where this dream came from either. I didn’t sleep a wink for the rest of that entire night.
• Delilah Jane LeFlufy. One night, I had a dream that a woman came to me out in the middle of this beautiful field filled with tall green grass and white daisies. She told me that I didn’t know who she was, but that she often watches over me. She told me I would have a little girl and her name would be Delilah Jane LeFlufy and then she laughed softly and walked away. I woke up with the name Delilah and a smile on my lips!
• The Baby In My Leg. Three nights ago, I dreamed that our baby was growing inside my upper thigh. Half of the thigh was translucent, so we could watch the baby develop and wave to it when its eyes opened. When the time came to deliver, my right thigh was huge and round, while my left was normal, and the doctor said he’d have to cut the baby out because there was no opening to deliver the baby through. So we watched while he took a scalpel and gave my leg a C section and out popped our baby – perfectly dry and fully clothed – and my leg closed itself and returned to normal size. No pain. No labor. Just a baby popping out of an unsuspecting upper thigh. I woke from that dream laughing in delight that the entire pregnancy and labor had been so darn easy!
• My Mom Tells Me Payback Is A Bitch. Last night, I once again awoke from a dream at exactly 3:15 a.m. This has happened every night for the last four nights and, whenever this happens, it is usually because one of my dead and gone’s is trying to send me a message. This time, when I woke up from the dream, I remembered it all and knew it wasn’t the first time I’d dreamt it lately. In the dream, my mom was sitting on her green loveseat in the living room of the townhouse I grew up in. She was knitting, with her glasses pulled down on the bridge of her nose to magnify her view and she was giggling at me. I was standing in front of her with my belly protruding far out in front of me and smiling at the pink sweater she was working on for the baby. The dream just went on like that for a long time and then I finally told her that I didn’t really want to have a little girl because I didn’t want to end up with a daughter that was as much trouble as I had been when I was a teenager. At this point, my mom threw back her head and laughed her very special laugh and said, Well, sweetie. Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it! Then I woke up. So, if that was my mom’s way of trying to tell me that we’re having a girl, I guess I don’t have much choice, do I???

That’s just a few of my crazy dreams of late, but I have been filling up a journal with them each morning and I imagine they will be something that I will look back on in a few years and laugh at.

And, because posts are always better with pics, here are a few samples of the crazy green color I chose for the baby’s room. I will post more once I move all of my office furniture back into the room and set it up.

Stay tuned for many more upcoming blogs. I’ve been trying to catch up since I finally started feeling less nauseous!

Have a good day my friends. I wish you all enough…

The Red Lake Experience – Kamloops Photographer Jo LeFlufy

Greg and I finally made it up to our friends’ cabin on Red Lake last weekend. The photo above is the view on the drive up. It’s very odd to see nearly no snow in January.

Glen and Florriann invite us up all the time, but we never seem to be able to make it, so I was thrilled when Greg decided to reschedule some stuff so we could head up to the lake.  The entire Fehr family is freakin’ fantiddlyastic in our books, so any time spent with them is time well spent!

Keep in mind, I am super nauseous right now and looking through my camera’s viewfinder to take pics does not help in the queasy department, so some of these photos are not going to be my best work because I basically threw the camera up to my eye and snapped without bothering to get the finest focus. But you’ll get the gist – we hung out, we had a blast and we can’t wait to do it again when we have time.

I like to call this next pic Just Waiting For Someone To Notice I Need A Ride

Let the ice racing begin!

Cousin pulling cousin. So cute.

Miss Janna loves her Greggy…and his awesome sled rides! In case you’re wondering, that’s chocolate all over her little adorable face!

Sliding around in circles. I like to call this one Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Roastin’ weenies

And lastly, my favorite smile in the whole world!

Good night my friends. I wish you all enough…

Random Thoughts of Late – Kamloops Photographer Jo LeFlufy

Lately I’ve been having many random thoughts – some hilarious, some not – and I feel like sharing them with you.

Random Jo Thought #1
What do unborn babies think when they hear their mothers farting? Do they freak out like dogs when they hear fireworks? Do they try, in vain, to hide behind their umbilical cords or does the sound of the farty fart soothe them and lull them to sleep? Just wondering…and chuckling at how many of you are probably laughing at me for posting this!

Random Jo Thought #2
They say that sexy underthings can really make the difference in how a woman’s day can turn out. I never used to put any stock in that until I recently started busting out of all of my pretty bras and can no longer seem to fit comfortably into my pretty undies. Now my days begin with a ten minute full on shuffle through of my ginch drawer, followed by ten minutes of cursing and holding back tears as I reluctantly trudge over to my sports bra drawer, throw on one of the ugly, shapeless garments and decide, yet again to go commando rather than try to squeeze into one of my favorite thongs. So, yah, now I totally believe that sexy underthings DO make a difference in my day because nothing says BAD DAY like a uni-boob inducing sports bra and granny panties!

Random Jo Thought #3
Words that make Jo laugh. Mathlete.  Okay, only one word, but still. That’s funny.

Random Jo Thought #4
Sometimes in life a TV commercial comes along that can make me laugh out loud, maybe for the rest of my life. The new A&W commercial, with the two guys talking about 2-for-4 Mama Burgers all jacked up on helium, is one funny commercial. It makes me chuckle at random times during the day, even when I haven’t seen the commercial for days. It’s a party. Everyone’s invited. Bring your kids. That is good writing!

Random Jo Thought #5
I repeat, Mathlete…

Random Jo Thought #6
Why do couples planning weddings spend astronomical amounts of money on frivolous crap, such as walking dessert tables and $4000 cakes, but then skimp out on the most important part of the day – the thing everyone will need to remember their day after the whirlwind is over – the photographer and/or videographer???? It often strikes me as ridiculous when I talk to a couple who is interested in booking me for their wedding and, after they spend an hour explaining to me exactly what they are looking for and what their expectations are, I show them the exact package they are talking about and they immediately balk. “But if we get that package, we won’t be able to afford that six horse carriage we want to rent for one hour to take us to the ceremony.” or…”Oh, I can’t spend that much because we won’t be able to buy as much booze for the limo ride to the church.”  Is it me? Are my priorities all screwed up?

Random Jo Thought #7
Who was it that told me that she totally LOVED being pregnant and that she could have spent her entire life being pregnant because it was such a great experience? As soon as I remember, I’m gonna punch her in the face!

Random Jo Thought #8
The Definition of Payback: When a women gets knocked up and her instant problems with flatulence nearly gag her husband every day. (Okay, so I seem to be thinking about gas a lot lately…can’t be helped).

Okay, that seems like enough random thoughts for today. I plan to do a blog in a day or two about the crazy dreams I’ve been having lately. I’ve been writing them down because it literally blows my mind that my brain can come up with this stuff. Last night I dreamt I was trapped inside my camera, looking out the lens as everyone lived their lives and forgot about me. HARSH.

No pics today. Don’t have any nearby. However, I took some fun shots on the weekend at our friends’ cabin on Red Lake and I’ll post some of those tomorrow. They’ll make you laugh!

Good night my friends. I wish you all enough…

Everything Happens For A Reason

I don’t think I have ever told anyone this entire story, but I’ve learned lately that keeping things inside causes health problems and I can’t afford to let any problems come up with my health right now.

So here goes.

On November 17, 1997, I gave birth to a baby boy named Kieran Riley Edwards. He died about 15 minutes after being born because his lungs weren’t developed enough to breathe on his own and I had given birth in a hospital that wasn’t equipped with a NICU for premies.

Suffice it to say, the entire experience was traumatizing and heart breaking and, admittedly, too much for my young self to take in at the time. Instead of allowing myself to grieve and move on, I shoved all of the memories far down into the deepest pockets of my psyche and refused to speak about them or think about them. I refused to even have a funeral for him and, instead, opted to leave him in the capable hands of the nurses who had so kindly coached me through labor, knowing full well that my baby was going to die and that there would only be more pain at the end of a long and already painful few days. Even now I can remember their kindness and how it made such a difficult time a little easier to bear.

In 2007, nearly ten years after Kieran died, I woke up one morning and just started crying and couldn’t stop. Images of tiny fingers and toes and a tiny little 1.5 lb. baby kept flashing through my mind. I felt again the tiny shudders of his body as he gasped his last few breaths before letting go. I felt a huge hollow open up in my chest. It was so deep, it was as though it could swallow my entire being if I just lay there long enough. I stayed like that for nearly four hours, my mind slowly beginning to recall little moments during the two days in which I lay in a hospital bed, praying that they had stopped my preterm labor in time. It just wasn’t meant to be.

During my second day in the hospital, the doctor came in to let us know that I’d lost too much amniotic fluid and blood to stop the inevitable. He informed me and my first husband that our baby would die because his lungs weren’t developed enough to sustain him and the small town hospital I was in didn’t have the right kind of equipment to help a premie live long enough to breathe on its own, nor could they transfer me to a larger hospital in time to save his life. For 30 hours, I laid awake with contractions becoming more and more unbearable and the baby’s heartbeat becoming more and more erratic.

Eventually, he was born and he died and life went on, although it was much more skewed and melancholy than it had been before his loss.

That day in 2007, I finally dragged myself out of bed and found the box in our spare room closet where I kept all of my important papers. Inside that box was a small envelope containing ink imprints of Kieran’s feet and hands, polaroids of his tiny corpse (morbid, I know, but it’s supposed to allow people to heal eventually) and all of his birth information – weight, length, etc. With shaking hands, I opened up the envelope and pulled out the contents – I hadn’t looked at them since a few months after his death – and, for the first time, I really looked at them. I touched his tiny footprints. I looked at his pictures. I read through his birth data. And I continued to cry. I walked around for nearly a week with that envelope in my purse or in my pocket, feeling as though just carrying them brought him closer to me again.

At the end of that week, I no longer felt that I wanted to cry and I no longer felt a hole in my chest. Instead, I felt something growing from the chaos and grief that I’d endured, deep down, for ten years – I felt closure. It took so long for me to come to grips with the loss and only a week to get it all out of my system and move on. It felt strange, but peaceful as well. I decided, in that moment, that I’d seen enough and I lit a fire in our fire place and burned each memory, one at a time, until they were gone. I’m still not sure why I did it, but it felt right somehow – as though I needed to purge my life of the memories in order to move on and start fresh. Whatever the reason, it worked.

One of my mom’s favorite sayings was “everything happens for a reason”. I used to get so annoyed with her when something I thought was terrible would happen and she would console me with “everything happens for a reason.” I’m sure she would laugh out loud if she could hear me say that I finally understand how right she was.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but absolutely everything that happens in my life, happens because it is meant to. My search for answers has led me to this conclusion over and over again and I can no longer ignore it or scoff at the idea that life is predetermined. Each time something happens in my life that causes me to question the universe’s motives, something else eventually comes along that makes it all crystal clear.

For me, the loss of my child was the catalyst I needed to spark change in my life. Sylvia Browne (a world-renowned psychic and spiritual leader and, some people (not me) say, a total quack) has said many times that the universe gives us wake up calls when our lives are heading off track and that these wake up calls are meant to cause us to change our course until we eventually jump back on the correct train. Even though I don’t agree with everything she says, I definitely believe she’s onto something there. Eckhart Tolle also says that everything that happens in our lives happens because it is supposed to happen and he suggests we just accept it and roll with it.

Now that I can look back at it without feeling my chest constrict, I realize that my son’s death, although tragic, did indeed happen for a reason.

I was married to a man who was neither liked nor trusted by any of my friends or family members. He’d asked me to marry him about six times before I’d finally given in and said yes (because I was pregnant and completely irrational). Right before I was about to walk down the isle, both my dad and my stepdad stopped and asked me, “Are you sure you want to do this?” Of course, I didn’t, but I felt a bit trapped because my friends and family had made the crazy trek over a ridiculously dangerous road to come to our tiny town to the wedding. I was young and fond of making poor choices and, rather than go with my gut feeling and back out, I went with the feeling that I didn’t want to make anyone angry that they’d come all that way for nothing. To make matters worse, we lived with my husband’s sister and her kids for a few months and neither sister liked me at all. Even after we moved into our own house, there was constant tension between me and his family. They never held anything back and never seemed to have a problem with telling their brother (in front of me) that I wasn’t good enough for him. I was young, pregnant and living in a constant state of stress and tension. And my husband never stood up for me when his family treated me like crap. I didn’t have any real friends in the town, didn’t have any family close by and my husband and his family constantly fought with each other one minute and made up the next. No wonder I went into early labor – the stress was too much for me and the baby to withstand. I didn’t know it at the time, but extreme stress is a well known cause of pre term labor.

The clincher for me was that the day we lost our baby, my husband left me at the hospital so he could “help his buddy move some stuff”. I found out later that he was helping his friend harvest a pot crop (a popular past time in my tiny town).  By the time I left the hospital, the seed for change had already been planted and I was already sprouting new buds of growth. The whole experience of losing the baby was just the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

Shortly after, I came to my senses, left my husband, moved back to Kamloops, went to University again, got my life together and spent years learning about myself. Eventually I started dating a guy who’d I’d known most of my life and we ended up happily married (most of the time ) and now, after many years of trying, pregnant. Everything about my life right now feels right. I feel as though I’m exactly where I am supposed to be.

I firmly believe that my mom was one of the wisest people I’ve ever known and that everything really does happen for a reason. Had my son lived, I suspect my life would still be spiraling down the wrong rabbit hole and I would be as lost as Alice. And the worst part would be that I’d be dragging a child along with me.

Good night my friends. I wish you all enough…

Meet Baby Kadee Marie Walker – Kamloops Baby Photographer, Jo LeFlufy

Up until last week, I had not yet become excited about our impending parenthood. Of course, feeling as though I’m going to vomit every time I move can be a huge deterrent to excitement. However, when I went over to Kathy and Cory’s house to shoot some pics of their new baby girl, Kadee Marie, excitement just started bubbling up inside me. It started when Cory handed her to me and I looked down into her little, angelic, perfectly beautiful sleeping face – enter a small belly flutter and a slightly accelerated heartbeat and the thought, Wow! We’re going to have one of these in August!

My excitement just kept building from that moment and, honestly, it hasn’t stopped and I hope it never does.

But enough about me, let’s get back to Kathy and Cory and their newest addition. She came a little early, so she was a little jaundiced, but she really is perfect. Absolutely perfect.

So, without any more delays, congrats to the Grant and Walker family (Kathy, Cory and Calvin) on their new bundle of joy!

These last three are my faves. So cute!

Thanks Kathy and Cory for a fun shoot with one adorable little babbbbby!

Congratulations to the Free Family Photo Shoot Winners for December!

I’m stoked to say that I finally finished going through all of the 83 entries I received for December’s contest for a Free Winter Family Photo Shoot. The emails I received were hilarious, heartwarming, full of grief and a few were just plain odd, but I enjoyed reading all of them and was amazed at how inspiring they were and how much they made me want to get out there and take up some new winter hobbies. One couple even sent me a picture of themselves, naked, ice fishing. They claimed it was good for the circulation and the fishing kept their minds off the intense cold…I believe I will classify that one as one of the “odd” entries.

The winning family is the Calhoun Family from the Chase area. I laughed so hard when I read their email that it instantly went into my “good chance we have a winner” pile and here is what they had to say about what they love most about winter:

“Hi Jo. A friend told us about your monthly contests and we keep meaning to enter them, but you haven’t had a contest until now that we could use for the whole family. We love your pictures (you shot our friend Jen’s wedding last summer and we couldn’t believe the pics! Awesome) and we’ve been dying to get some taken. My name is Randy and my wife’s name is Lisa and our girls names are Kassie and Jordalyn. Kassie is 6 and Jordie is 4. We asked the girls what they love most about winter and we wrote down what they said word for word to give you some inspiration.

Kassie: “Dear Jo. What I like most about winter is that I get to put on my pretty purple snowsuit and play in the snow. I like snow. It is cold and wet and sometimes it gets stuck in my boots. One time I peed my pants outside and, when I took my boot off and dumped out the pee, it made the snow all yellow and smelly. I cried because I got really cold, but mom said it was okay and that accidents happen. I still love snow, but I know where the yellow stuff comes from now, so I don’t put it in my snowmans… p.s. Have you ever peed into your boot before?”

Jordie: “Dear Jo. I like it when daddy pulls us around in our sled. I don’t like it when he runs too fast and our sled tips over and I fall out and scratch my face on the ice. I like to eat snow because it tastes like Christmas.”

As for Lisa and I. What we love most about winter is seeing the expressions on our kids faces each time we introduce them to something new, such as tobagganing (yes, there was a face scraping incident) or tubing at Harper Mountain. We love watching them build snow angels and catch snowflakes on their tongues and we even thought it was hilarious when Kassie stuck her tongue to the metal post on our mailbox earlier this year. I guess what I’m saying is what we love most about winter is enjoying it with our children. I hope this is what you were looking for and I hope it gives you a good laugh.”

Well, Randy, it did indeed give me a good laugh. So much so that I can’t wait to meet your family and do our winter fun shoot.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to enter the contest (and also to those who said such lovely things about my work). The next contest will be coming up in February and will be for a Free Baby or Belly Shoot. You can check on my website under “Upcoming Events” to see details really soon.

And keep on loving that winter season.

Here’s the pic the Calhoun family sent with their email.

Learning To Accept

For those of you who follow my blog regularly, you already know that I’ve been cruising along on a spiritual journey for the last couple of years and it has taken me to places I’ve never dreamt of visiting. One of those places is deep inside myself, behind all the thoughts generated by the ego, to the Being who lives inside all of us and connects us all universally.

One of the most fundamental aspects of my journey on the road to enlightenment (or whatever you may call it) has been learning to accept what is and learning how to stop fighting against it. The majority of the world lives in either a near constant state of unhappiness (which I use collectively as a term for all negativity). We fight against accepting what is going on in our lives with statements such as, “I don’t want to live like this,” or, “I don’t want to feel this way,” or, “This isn’t fair,” etc.  It’s ironic, but the mere thought of denying how we feel actually pulls us deeper into that feeling.

For example, if I am in a terrible mood and I think to myself, “I don’t want to be in this terrible mood,” I am fighting against myself by adding more negativity into an already negative situation. All it usually takes to snap out of a negative thought pattern is to recognize when it is occuring. It takes practice, but anyone can do it. That instant of recognition is usually enough to temporarily stop the negative pattern in its tracks (and, the more practiced you become at it, the longer it will cease to occur).

If I am in a terrible mood and I recognize it, the mood usually changes instantly. It’s as though I say to myself (without speaking), “I recognize that I am in a terrible mood and I am okay with that.” The mere act of recognizing it and letting it be (ie. not fighting against it) is all that is needed for the mood, and the thoughts behind it, to disappear.

Think about your own thought patterns for a moment. How often do you spend valuable time denying your feelings? How often do you fight against yourself, spinning yourself further down the negativity web, by thinking I don’t want to be like this or feel like this or look like this, etc.? Now think about how much easier your life would be if you could stop fighting against yourself by training yourself to learn to accept what is going on in your life at this moment. Can you see the potential for kicking negativity’s ass?

Negative thought patterns are an addiction that the human race needs to learn how to overcome and, as with all addictions, acceptance is the first step to recovery.

Be mindful of your thoughts and accepting of them and a whole new world will start to open up to you.

I wish you all enough…

Bellies & Babies – Kathy, Cory, Calvin and ??? – Kamloops Maternity Photographer Jo LeFlufy

My friend Kathy asked me a few months ago if we could schedule some Belly Shots for sometime in December and I happily agreed without really thinking too much about it. We used to work together and I’ve done her family pics for the last couple of years, so I was excited to shoot some belly shots for her. There was just one nagging problem…I’d never done an indoor wintertime belly shoot before. The light in winter is so completely different than the light during the rest of the year that I was a bit concerned that I would have a hard time making the light work. So, rather than charge her for the shots, I offered to do them for free in case she hated them (hey, it happens to all photographers at some point). She was game! Kathy did some searching and sent me some shots she’d seen on the internet that she liked. And so, armed with her favorite examples, I headed up to Kathy and Cory’s new house with butterflies in my stomach (yes, I always get butterflies before a shoot and probably always will).

Kathy’s new house is gorgeous and I was excited that it had lots of big windows so I could shoot in natural light as much as possible. Unfortunately, it was starting to get dark outside and, rather than jack up my ISO to let more light in and, in turn, get grainy photos, I pulled out my flash and turned on some lights and went with it. I’m not a big fan of artificial light for shooting, but beautiful, natural light is often not available in the middle of winter around here, so I do what I can. For the first half hour, I did my best to replicate some of the photos that Kathy liked, but, needless to say, following someone else’s photos and fighting the light zaps my creative energy, so it wasn’t long before I decided to set them aside and do my own thing. After that I was able to stop concentrating so hard and just let the ideas flow. And, for a first time indoor wintertime belly shoot, it turned out okay. Everybody has to start somewhere, right!

I believe Kathy is having her baby sometime this week, maybe next, and I hope that she comes home and logs on to find a pleasant surprise and not a natural disaster in these photos!!

Without further ado…let me introduce you to Kathy, her belly, her guy (Cory) and their adorable son (Calvin).

Calvin loves to drive his trucks on mom’s belly!

I love his face expression in this next picture!

Calvin just has the BEST face expressions!

He decided to take a break from belly shots to do a little dancing. Hilarious!

And now back to the belly shots…

He’s making a heart on his “baby belly” too.

I’m thinking I need a bit more indoor winter shooting experience to find my groove and, hey, that’s okay. Every time I do a shoot, regardless of the time of year or the location, I learn something new and that’s the best part of being a photographer – I get to learn new things every day.

So Kath, I hope you like what you’ve seen so far and I’m looking forward to coming over to shoot the new baby and showing you the rest of these pics.

I wish you all enough…