Macro Love Photography

My dreams for Macro Love Photography, and efforts over time, have evolved into this passion project. Wildflower Power Oracle is a 77-card oracle deck I am preparing to self-publish. A blend of my passions for nature, wildflowers, environmental protection, photography, and spirituality. The experiences in my life and the knowledge gained have all contributed, like seeds planted, no matter how detrimental or insignificant they may have seemed at the time. My heart, soul, and hundreds of hours have gone into this creation, and it is just the beginning of what Macro Love Photography can accomplish. The business is like an enchanted forest, propagated from the seeds planted throughout my life, in the early stages of evolution. This particular project is like a sunlit opening amongst the trees filled with wildflowers waiting to burst into bloom and share their magic.

What is an oracle deck, you might ask? It is a physical tool, a card deck, with messages to help you access your intuition for answers and guidance. It is similar and yet different from tarot, which you may have heard of. Oracle cards are freestyle, usually channeled messages, on any number of cards. Tarot is a set style with 78 specific cards, 22 being major arcana or life themes, and 56 being minor arcana or daily circumstances, divided into 4 suits. Wildflower Power Oracle is composed of healing messages inspired from 60 different wildflower species and their close-up photos, all native to Southern Interior British Columbia, Canada. It will come with a guidebook of additional information on botany, ecology, traditional uses, and energy centers or Chakras, affected by each flower. It will be printed on 100% recycled cardstock and a portion of profits (probably 10%) will be donated to select environmental and humanitarian organizations. A membership option to Macro Love Photography would open a whole new world of possibilities. It could be a subscription to a unique set of greeting cards, and/or to the new decks I will design and publish in future. It would allow a choice of organizations to put donations towards. In a perfect world, this oracle deck is only one of infinite possibilities for future creations of Macro Love Photography. Your support would allow this. My intention is to educate about environmental issues and to ignite the same love and passion I feel for nature in others, projected through my camera lens and inspiring words. My name is Shane, and I am the photographer, designer, and author of Macro love Photography and Wildflower Power Oracle.

I want to teach respect for Mother Earth, her elements, plants, and wildlife, and create connection and healing within others and therefore without, in our natural world. I have been on a quest for purpose my entire life and this is part of mine. We must heal the relationship with ourselves first to heal our relationship with the planet.

Healing Presence

Have you felt the presence of a wise, ancient tree?

Have you felt a similar presence within you and me?

This unseen force of sophisticated beauty and power,

The seed containing the blueprint for the flower.

It is the presence of our earth Mother.

The one we share with each other.

The reason we are kin.

The DNA we share within.

Like night and day,

and seasons at play,

We also share the power of pain,

The force focusing us on personal gain.

The reason we harm one another,

The reason we harm our earth mother.

We reject and sabotage within,

And the healing begins in our very own skin.

Recognize and feel your pain,

Allow it to shamelessly stand naked in the rain.

Honour it as it washes away in natures shower,

And remember denial will only give it power.

Break the generational chains,

There is destruction and suffering to lose and love and compassion to gain.

Our earth has given birth to you, me, the bear, the bee, and the ancient tree.

We are all kin, you see.

The first seed for Macro Love Photography sprouted in my mind around 2004 after I bought a macro lens for my camera for an unrelated reason. It was to take close-up photos of people's irises (the coloured parts of the eyes) for clinical Iridology, which I was studying. I began to experiment taking macro photos of nature. At the time, I did not know anything about oracle cards or where this new hobby would take me. I fell in love with nature photography and especially macro photography of wildflowers. I moved a lot throughout my life, and with my love for the outdoors and hiking, I ended up with a large, varied collection of wildflower photos from all over Southern Interior BC. I felt the need to do something with them, so in 2014, I created a Facebook page to share them, and named it Macro Love Photography. I began dreaming of the possibility of turning it into a business and how it might look. I knew from the beginning, it had to reflect and inspire the passion I feel for nature. I have always felt, and still feel, the most at peace, alive, and connected spiritually in nature. I receive inspiring words, feelings, and sometimes direct messages, which usually equate to journaling or poetry. I eventually realized I was receiving unique messages from different plants, wildlife, and environments. It is a natural process and flows easily to me, so I did not think much about it, and assumed everyone was like this. I now realize it is a unique strength. Everyone has this ability if connected to nature and their intuition, but I believe we are all given certain strengths for a reason. I am meant to share this and help others tap into their own intuition and connection with nature. Now that I am actually putting this into writing, it feels a bit strange and scary. Being out of the ordinary and not freely accepted by all is the reason, I suppose. Intuition and open spirituality are not generally taught or acknowledged in mainstream society, so for some people like me, it must be discovered and practiced alone. I would like to help change this. I am still learning to find pride in my differences. We are all unique like the wildflowers and I want this to be celebrated like the beauty it is. I guess publishing this card deck will be like part of my uncloaking, or "coming out of the closet" as a very spiritual person and blossoming for the world to see.

Following my vision, which I now realize is spiritual guidance, I started incorporating the messages I received with my photography by putting them directly onto the photos. This was a learning process. Money has always been a struggle for me, and more often than I'd like to admit, I have been near poverty as a single mom. This point in my life was one of those times. I found a free watermarking program called UMark to embed my words and logo onto my photos. I downloaded it onto my cheap laptop, in my car, in a Tim Hortons parking lot to use the Wi-Fi. Hours and many curse words later, it gave me the ability to turn part of my vision into reality. I am still using this program today, but now the paid version. I am also still using the beautiful logo a friend helped me create back then.

Knowing little about business and working at a minimum wage job to try to make ends meet, I decided to try selling some photography at the local farmers market on the side. My daughter and I set up and sold a few prints on a variety of materials. Also, some handmade inspirational greeting cards with my watermarked photos glued onto some beautiful, fair-trade Lokta paper from Nepal. The cards did okay, and I donated $1 from each card sale to the Nature Trust of BC, which ended up being just over $100! I realized after expenses, I did not actually make any profit and didn't know how to proceed or grow my business. After this failed attempt and life's ever-changing journey, I left it behind... until now.

Many years later, I have a new career as a Registered Massage Therapist. Five years ago, I uprooted our lives and moved us to a new town to go back to school and create a more stable future for myself and my daughter. The more financially stable part is still a work in progress. I have been registered for 2 years now, the first being business start-up, and the second being shut down due to COVID-19 for 3 months. The ability to even begin, pay for tuition and living expenses, and then start my business was only possible with financial help. I qualified for amazing programs available through Community Futures in BC, and full student loans of course. Applying for these programs and going through school as a mature student was grueling. I did it though and as a result I have the freedom to pursue other passions like this one! It also gave me in-depth knowledge of human anatomy and physiology, which helped me understand the connections between plants and people. Although I find fulfillment in my new career, I also find it drains my energy. I cannot justify working longer hours at the expense of quality treatment for my patients and ultimately burning myself out. Do not get me wrong, I am paying the bills while helping people and grateful for it! I am not paying down any debts, however. I am working towards making a living with a combination of avenues, including Macro love Photography, to change this.

During the 3 months my profession was shut down last year, the epiphany of the oracle deck came to me. I had started an online course through Pacific Rim College on Community Herbalism. I have always had a keen interest in herbal medicine and never had the means to pursue it. By keen interest, I mean I once read an entire herbal encyclopedia for fun. I am reminded of my passion for plants through this course. I also spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos of oracle and tarot readings and doing readings for myself. I started hiking again and dusted off my camera. It was during a hike the idea came to me... "Yes! Why have I never thought of this before? I'm already creating oracle cards and didn't even realize it!" The forest opened in the windfall and seeds began to germinate as the sun shone through the trees. The creation of Wildflower Power Oracle began. Now, after over a year of growth and nourishment in the forms of learning, faith, self-discipline, and patience, it is waiting to burst into bloom. I am currently creating and will soon be launching a Kickstarter campaign to hopefully raise the funds to do the first print run of 500 decks, guidebooks, and boxes.

Another relevant contribution to this project and business is some outdated education of Recreation, Fish and Wildlife, Technology at Selkirk College in 2002-2003. It involved botany and identification of plants native to the Kootenay region of BC. I previously thought taking this diploma program after high school was a mistake, since I never really knew what to do with it. The seasonal work I did get out of it was bio-control of noxious weeds, releasing insects to control non-native, invasive plants in the backcountry. These plants can destroy native eco-systems and wildlife that rely on them, and are often introduced inadvertently by someone planting a "pretty" flower in their garden or a seed mix. Most people are unaware of the consequences and that there are any at all. This is part of what I want to spread awareness of now, and the reason I chose to include only native wildflowers in my deck. They are beautiful and require very little care because they are adapted to the environment already! This education also taught me about forest succession and different types of forest ecosystems called biogeoclimatic (BEC) zones, allocated by climate, geography, and the plant life they sustain. Succession is stages of evolution in a forest's life. Each stage has different tree and plant species that are vitally important to the health of the ecosystem over time and the survival of wildlife. There are different species of birds, insects, and wildlife dependent on each stage. The timeline of a forests life is vastly different from our own and is 1000's of years to eventually become old growth and support even more life, including human life. Forestry in BC and elsewhere needs to change to reflect this. It needs to focus on ecosystem health first and then profit. Not profit alone at the expense of other life. Macro Love photography will support these causes through existing organizations to hopefully bring healthy change and prevent more loss of life like the caribou, for example, that rely on unaltered, old growth forests.

As it turns out, all this knowledge from different times and places in my life helped me create this project and is useful after all. It is like everything in my life up until now has been conspiring to bring this project to fruition, including my hard life lessons. Life has been a journey of self-discovery, and like everyone, some of my discoveries were though pain, like abusive relationships, anxiety, physical ailments, addiction, and struggles with self-love and self-worth. I am still, and always will be, a work in progress, but have come a long way. I want to help others who are going through difficulties, and this oracle deck is a means to that. Many of my life lessons are reflected in the messages. I cannot take full credit though, as I have been guided by the spiritual realm all along. It is a co-creation, and I am only a conduit for higher power.

Plants heal, and inspire healing and growth on all levels, being emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual. All aspects need to be addressed for complete healing to occur. Flowers are profound and potent expressions of the divine, like small portals between worlds of ethereal bliss and our earthly, physical existence. They are all unique, and like little bursts of magic from another dimension. The emotion and thoughts evoked through their fragrance, presence, and beauty, contains healing energy for transformation and reaching potential. Everyone has intuition and the ability to listen to, feel, or even see, the non-physical, especially through something physical like a flower. This oracle deck is intended to strengthen this connection and empower you to heal and love yourself. To help you feel deep loving connection and compassion with yourself, others, all life, and the healing magic of nature.

Supporting this project will allow me to turn this dream venture of Macro Love Photography into a real opportunity to support myself and my family, and to give back to causes close to my heart. It will bring Wildflower Power Oracle into full bloom for the world to see and spark healing magic in their souls. I am now learning money is simply an exchange of energy and to transform my thoughts and fears around it, to change my reality for more freedom. This article is part of the process. The success of this project will allow the beginning of limitless creative potential for Macro Love Photography to evolve and transform into the healing and inspiring force it is meant to be. It will allow the next stage of succession to take root in the vast forest, full of life and magical wildflowers speaking to all souls who gaze upon them. It is not just a photography business, it is art expressed in various forms, and an advocate for Mother Earth and all life born of her. It is an educational and healing tool. It is of great scale, scope, and capability.