Um, seriously? And just how many clients do you think actually care about a little certification as opposed to total cost? Anyone with any experience with the “green label,” be it in photography, general home products, or construction (ie. “L.E.E.D. certified”) knows that it just increases the price of the product, often significantly, with no real return but an smug ego boost.

You’re better off spending the time you would use for worrying about meeting all the items on the “green” checklist for adding that many more creative touches, or picking up an extra event or two over the course of a year.

Perhaps you can forward stuff like this to local competitors, and then advertise the point at wedding shows that you can get the same/better product from you at X-thousand dollars less. If you think people really are concerned about “greeness,” there’s no reason to tell them why you cost less, just that you do.

[...] on the heels of our recent blog post highlighting an organization that certifies professional photographers as [...]

Carli,

I appreciate your pointing out how easy it can be for photographers to adopt practices that are gentler on the environment. I’m not familiar with “Green Wedding Providers” although I did notice that I was listed on it. Also mentioned on this blog is Greenerweddingphotography.org which is a non-profit committed to helping photographers learn how to adopt greener practices.

Dan — I understand your reaction to this. Often, green products do cost more but non-green products often have hidden costs that are ultimately paid. If we use toxic but cheaper products today and the production or disposal of those products causes toxicity in our water supply (MTBE comes to mind among 1000s of others), and we have children with birth defects as a consequence those costs to us, our children and society as a whole end up being much greater than the cost of these products.

Fortunately, many green choices actually can save us money. The easiest of these for us as photographers is using rechargeable batteries. They cost a lot more than alkaline batteries but over their usage life save a lot of money and offer higher performance. Another easy change is to minimize our printing of proof prints. Clients usually just keep the proofs in a box using just a few of them. Distributing them v ia web or CD discourages printing them and actually saves us money. If you are worried about losing print orders then keep the images low resolution.

The one point Carli makes that I disagree with is that it’s greener to use an online print provider rather than printing ourselves. It’s not that simple. If we are printing dye-sub prints or glossy prints on a small inkjet printer, she is probably correct. But if you have the option to print using a CIS (continues ink system) that allows for large bulk supplies of ink, and print on recycled paper then it may be less toxic than photographic prints.

Other obvious changes such as using CFLs or LED based lighting, recycling and reusing when possible, and keeping as much out of the garbage as possible (i.e. giving something away rather than throwing it out) are wins for us, others and the environment.

Rudi

“Distributing them v ia web or CD discourages printing them and actually saves us money.”

Although environmentally sound, I think this will be historically a tragedy, as millions and millions of images are lost due to hard drive crashes, dye degradation, and technological obsolescence.

I don’t consider myself a “green” photographer. But I meet all of these criteria and many more. Marketing yourself as a green photographer may help you with some clients but others may view you with derision, seeing you as a victim of what I like to call the “green lemming effect.”

Being a Certified Green Business has helped me win clients over as well as reduce my overhead and keep my prices low.

We use an online print provider that has the equipment and customer service staff to be able to provide excellent prints and customer satisfaction. I can imagine the overhead some photographers have with purchasing, maintaining, repairing and disposing of photo-quality printers + supplies + sales tax on delivering physical prints/media. What about the time, effort and costs associated with dealing with the print orders, delivery, and customer service. I can imagine having to pay people to staff the phones and sit behind a counter for as many hours as an online provider can handle. The overhead of doing your own prints must be high, causing the prices to be high enough to reflect the costs of doing it.

Some photographers still use film.
Film is responsible for some nasty environmental pollution. For example, dichloromethane (methylene chloride) is a carcinogenic solvent used in the production of film. Silver is used in the production and processing of film and can be more toxic to aquatic organisms than mercury. For every roll of film developed, at least 4 ounces of toxic chemicals are disposed of, usually down the drain and into our waterways.

In 2005, the Stockholm Water Authority noted that the increased use of digital photography over traditional film photography has cut the silver pollution by 50% in the city’s sewers in just five years.

The paper used to print pictures is chemically treated and is typically not recyclable or recycled.