Friday, March 28, 2008
Altamonte Pass Wind Farms
A videographer friend (Gerry Wilson of Take 2 Video) and I toured some solar and wind installations yesterday. It was a beautiful spring day to be out shooting. Here are a few images.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Sustainable Photography Initiative
This year marks my 30th as a professional photographer. Much of that time I’ve owned and operated my own studio, but I also worked for 8 years as a staff photojournalist for a local paper, collaboratively managed a colleague’s studio for several years and spent two incredible years in the mid 90’s immersed in the early days of the web—helping to design and launch a wedding-specific search engine. This varied experience has given me a fairly good grasp on what it takes to run a studio—not just as a creative image-maker but all the other aspects too: from graphic design to marketing, from computer retouching to managing media assets, from business analysis to bookkeeping, and from salesmanship to client psychology. We really do have a lot to manage in our Studios and it rarely gets boring, that’s for sure.
Over the last few years, as we’ve all been hearing more and more about global climate change, I’ve devoted a great deal of time to researching the issue. Because of this I’ve also been thinking more than ever about my business and its effects on, and interconnectedness with, the environment. Like many of you I’ve been conscious and careful of energy use—mostly, to be honest, because of its high cost—and have dutifully recycled things like paper, cardboard, cans and bottles for most of my life. More recently I’ve added used batteries to the list and prefer to use rechargeables whenever possible instead of single use products. And of course I’ve switched to CFL’s from regular incandescent light bulbs.
But the research I’ve been doing has brought me to a concept much deeper and more profound than simple recycling: that of sustainability. Although the elements required to fully describe and facilitate sustainability are almost unimaginably complex, a simple definition that covers all of them is:
“Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
In other words, being a sustainable society requires not only that we consider the needs of our own families, livelihoods, and the commons that we all share today (air, water, raw materials, public lands, etc.) but that we also consider the needs of future generations. Sustainability encompasses not just environmental issues but economic and social justice aspects of our culture as well.
It has become painfully clear that for many reasons, including population growth and our highly successful economic system, we are burning through many of our natural resources at a completely unsustainable rate. Crude oil, for example, is not just the source for the energy that runs our cars but also the petrochemicals used in everything from plastics to fertilizers, from food additives to pharmaceuticals. While there is a debate about just when Peak Oil—the point at which half of all the oil available (and a majority of the "cheap" or easy to extract oil has been pumped out and used up) will occur, most sources I have read estimate it will happen sometime in the next 10 to 20 years. Some feel we are already past this threshold. When we do hit Peak Oil it, and all the products derived from it, will become increasingly expensive. Oil is a finite resource that took millions of years for the earth to create and just about 200 ears for humans to blow through—by any measure an unsustainable practice that the vast majority of scientists worldwide agree has also been a major contributor to global climate change. We’ve over-cut our forests, over-fished the seas, and have repeated the same short-sighted behavior with almost every other resource we have.
(For a GREAT little primer on sustainability and our culture check out The Story of Stuff.)
Many of the challenges we’re now facing worldwide in the natural environment (as well as in the economic and social environments) are, I believe, a direct result of our inattention to the concept of sustainability. Up until the industrial revolution we just weren’t technologically advanced enough to be able to affect the commons in the ways we have since, and humans are now awesomely adept at plundering and altering these community assets at an ever-increasing rate.
It’s understandable how we got here: our societies and industries developed in a much different time—in a world with drastically lower population, seemingly unlimited resources and natural assets that appeared too vast to be adversely affected by our human activities. But the world we live in now has changed and we’re beginning to understand the true interconnectedness of our biosphere and its limits.
Consider this statistic:
“Industry moves, mines, extracts, shovels, burns, wastes, pumps and disposes of four million pounds of material in order to provide one average, middle-class American family their needs for a year.”
This sobering information, taken from visionary carpet industry leader Ray Anderson’s company website (http://www.interfaceinc.com/), highlights the crux of the problem. While the United States only has about 5% of the world’s population it consumes about 25% of the resources extracted worldwide each year. China, India and other developing nations are catching up quickly, however, and they crave the same creature comforts we have: flush toilets, central heating and cooling, reliable transportation, a plentiful variety of food—all part of a lifestyle we in America take for granted. But unfortunately there just aren’t enough resources to go around at this point in our history and as these 21st century economic powerhouses expand we’re going to start to see shortages of many resources (such as oil, wood, concrete, steel, food and water) in the west, and dramatically rising prices. We already have. And our resource depleting industries are polluting the commons for everyone in the bargain.
In spite of this gloomy forecast there are many (myself included) who feel there is a huge economic opportunity offered by this crisis. By creating products and processes that “reduce, reuse and recycle” our resources and waste we can move towards a much more sustainable business model while also rewarding the entrepreneurs. In addition, necessity will spawn whole new industries and marketing models (such as leasing, rather than selling carpet—then returning it to the factory for re-manufacture).
I recently came across this wonderful quote from the website www.worldchanging.com:
“Business doesn't have to be destructive. At its core, business is about livelihoods and service: providing for our needs by providing what others need. Increasingly, all sorts of people, from CEO's and economists to consumers and small investors, are realizing that we can remake business to truly serve the public good - and make a lot of money in the process. We can build businesses that embrace sustainability, openness, and fairness not as a sideline ethical consideration, but as the path to profits. Indeed, millions of people are involved in efforts to capture the profit that's available through healing the planet.”
This last point was confirmed for me personally at the Bioneers (www.bioneers.com) convention last Fall when speaker after speaker spoke eloquently of the successes (financial and otherwise) they had realized by working in emerging sustainable fields (such as renewable energy, organic food production and restaurants, green chemistry or biomimicry) or by integrating sustainable practices into their businesses. The inspiring message came across loud and clear: by discovering what positive new models and practices can and are being developed or achieved, integrating what we learn into our personal lives and businesses, and sharing these with others, needed changes will take place. Eventually a paradigm shift hopefully will occur and the sustainable ethic will be the rule, rather than the exception, in our culture.
So, what does all this have to do with my photography business, or your studio? I’ve come to the conclusion that you and I CAN make a difference, that we hold the keys as business owners, employees and/or consumers to begin shifting our small section of the economy (the imaging industry) towards a more sustainable ethic by carefully choosing what we buy and who we do business with.
This will be done first by educating ourselves about the many products we use and how their manufacture, use, and disposal affect the environment. Becoming aware of the existing green options and alternatives will then allow us to make purchasing choices supporting companies offering the alternatives or practices we want to encourage, driving the market as a whole in the right direction. Some companies are already well on their way to green awareness, others are just starting the process. (We do need to beware of greenwashing—the practice of companies making token green efforts as marketing ploys—but the journey towards sustainability will be made one step at a time. We all have to start somewhere.)
Right now it’s true that many green alternatives are more “expensive” when compared in the traditional sense to existing products—without taking into consideration the environmental externalities (google the term for lots of information) paid by the public and the economic subsidies that give many entrenched industries an unfair advantage. Some green alternatives are very competitive even today, but the reality is many of us just won’t be able to afford go totally green until economies of scale in production drive costs down to make them competitive. This is starting to happen, but it will take time. There are still many things we can do today, however, and that’s why I have chosen to start this Initiative, and forum.
So I am hereby challenging everyone in the photographic industry who is interested in sustainability to help move this idea forward. If you want to help, get in touch with me at sustainablephoto@gmail.com.
In the next post I’ll start outlining things I have learned that we can do as photographers, or those involved in the imaging industry, which I hope will facilitate an ongoing discussion regarding sustainability and green alternatives. I certainly do not have all the answers and am not 100% green by any means. I don’t think that’s possible in today’s developed society anyway. But I’m working on it, and what I’ve learned, as well as what I will learn from others, might be helpful to the larger community.
Items for future discussion will be:
Renewable energy (solar and small wind) at your home or commercial location
Products from sustainably managed forests (frames, copy paper, building materials)
Sources for recycled bags, print folders and packaging
Sources for shipping containers and shipping materials made from recycled materials
Computer and electronics recycling
Print cartridge recycling programs
Carbon offsets
Letter campaigns to our vendors
Global climate change information
For more information about sustainability, go here:
Natural Step Network
Wikipedia Definition
Sustainability Institute
Earth Charter
ZeroFootprint Calculator
Raymond Baltar
Over the last few years, as we’ve all been hearing more and more about global climate change, I’ve devoted a great deal of time to researching the issue. Because of this I’ve also been thinking more than ever about my business and its effects on, and interconnectedness with, the environment. Like many of you I’ve been conscious and careful of energy use—mostly, to be honest, because of its high cost—and have dutifully recycled things like paper, cardboard, cans and bottles for most of my life. More recently I’ve added used batteries to the list and prefer to use rechargeables whenever possible instead of single use products. And of course I’ve switched to CFL’s from regular incandescent light bulbs.
But the research I’ve been doing has brought me to a concept much deeper and more profound than simple recycling: that of sustainability. Although the elements required to fully describe and facilitate sustainability are almost unimaginably complex, a simple definition that covers all of them is:
“Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
In other words, being a sustainable society requires not only that we consider the needs of our own families, livelihoods, and the commons that we all share today (air, water, raw materials, public lands, etc.) but that we also consider the needs of future generations. Sustainability encompasses not just environmental issues but economic and social justice aspects of our culture as well.
It has become painfully clear that for many reasons, including population growth and our highly successful economic system, we are burning through many of our natural resources at a completely unsustainable rate. Crude oil, for example, is not just the source for the energy that runs our cars but also the petrochemicals used in everything from plastics to fertilizers, from food additives to pharmaceuticals. While there is a debate about just when Peak Oil—the point at which half of all the oil available (and a majority of the "cheap" or easy to extract oil has been pumped out and used up) will occur, most sources I have read estimate it will happen sometime in the next 10 to 20 years. Some feel we are already past this threshold. When we do hit Peak Oil it, and all the products derived from it, will become increasingly expensive. Oil is a finite resource that took millions of years for the earth to create and just about 200 ears for humans to blow through—by any measure an unsustainable practice that the vast majority of scientists worldwide agree has also been a major contributor to global climate change. We’ve over-cut our forests, over-fished the seas, and have repeated the same short-sighted behavior with almost every other resource we have.
(For a GREAT little primer on sustainability and our culture check out The Story of Stuff.)
Many of the challenges we’re now facing worldwide in the natural environment (as well as in the economic and social environments) are, I believe, a direct result of our inattention to the concept of sustainability. Up until the industrial revolution we just weren’t technologically advanced enough to be able to affect the commons in the ways we have since, and humans are now awesomely adept at plundering and altering these community assets at an ever-increasing rate.
It’s understandable how we got here: our societies and industries developed in a much different time—in a world with drastically lower population, seemingly unlimited resources and natural assets that appeared too vast to be adversely affected by our human activities. But the world we live in now has changed and we’re beginning to understand the true interconnectedness of our biosphere and its limits.
Consider this statistic:
“Industry moves, mines, extracts, shovels, burns, wastes, pumps and disposes of four million pounds of material in order to provide one average, middle-class American family their needs for a year.”
This sobering information, taken from visionary carpet industry leader Ray Anderson’s company website (http://www.interfaceinc.com/), highlights the crux of the problem. While the United States only has about 5% of the world’s population it consumes about 25% of the resources extracted worldwide each year. China, India and other developing nations are catching up quickly, however, and they crave the same creature comforts we have: flush toilets, central heating and cooling, reliable transportation, a plentiful variety of food—all part of a lifestyle we in America take for granted. But unfortunately there just aren’t enough resources to go around at this point in our history and as these 21st century economic powerhouses expand we’re going to start to see shortages of many resources (such as oil, wood, concrete, steel, food and water) in the west, and dramatically rising prices. We already have. And our resource depleting industries are polluting the commons for everyone in the bargain.
In spite of this gloomy forecast there are many (myself included) who feel there is a huge economic opportunity offered by this crisis. By creating products and processes that “reduce, reuse and recycle” our resources and waste we can move towards a much more sustainable business model while also rewarding the entrepreneurs. In addition, necessity will spawn whole new industries and marketing models (such as leasing, rather than selling carpet—then returning it to the factory for re-manufacture).
I recently came across this wonderful quote from the website www.worldchanging.com:
“Business doesn't have to be destructive. At its core, business is about livelihoods and service: providing for our needs by providing what others need. Increasingly, all sorts of people, from CEO's and economists to consumers and small investors, are realizing that we can remake business to truly serve the public good - and make a lot of money in the process. We can build businesses that embrace sustainability, openness, and fairness not as a sideline ethical consideration, but as the path to profits. Indeed, millions of people are involved in efforts to capture the profit that's available through healing the planet.”
This last point was confirmed for me personally at the Bioneers (www.bioneers.com) convention last Fall when speaker after speaker spoke eloquently of the successes (financial and otherwise) they had realized by working in emerging sustainable fields (such as renewable energy, organic food production and restaurants, green chemistry or biomimicry) or by integrating sustainable practices into their businesses. The inspiring message came across loud and clear: by discovering what positive new models and practices can and are being developed or achieved, integrating what we learn into our personal lives and businesses, and sharing these with others, needed changes will take place. Eventually a paradigm shift hopefully will occur and the sustainable ethic will be the rule, rather than the exception, in our culture.
So, what does all this have to do with my photography business, or your studio? I’ve come to the conclusion that you and I CAN make a difference, that we hold the keys as business owners, employees and/or consumers to begin shifting our small section of the economy (the imaging industry) towards a more sustainable ethic by carefully choosing what we buy and who we do business with.
This will be done first by educating ourselves about the many products we use and how their manufacture, use, and disposal affect the environment. Becoming aware of the existing green options and alternatives will then allow us to make purchasing choices supporting companies offering the alternatives or practices we want to encourage, driving the market as a whole in the right direction. Some companies are already well on their way to green awareness, others are just starting the process. (We do need to beware of greenwashing—the practice of companies making token green efforts as marketing ploys—but the journey towards sustainability will be made one step at a time. We all have to start somewhere.)
Right now it’s true that many green alternatives are more “expensive” when compared in the traditional sense to existing products—without taking into consideration the environmental externalities (google the term for lots of information) paid by the public and the economic subsidies that give many entrenched industries an unfair advantage. Some green alternatives are very competitive even today, but the reality is many of us just won’t be able to afford go totally green until economies of scale in production drive costs down to make them competitive. This is starting to happen, but it will take time. There are still many things we can do today, however, and that’s why I have chosen to start this Initiative, and forum.
So I am hereby challenging everyone in the photographic industry who is interested in sustainability to help move this idea forward. If you want to help, get in touch with me at sustainablephoto@gmail.com.
In the next post I’ll start outlining things I have learned that we can do as photographers, or those involved in the imaging industry, which I hope will facilitate an ongoing discussion regarding sustainability and green alternatives. I certainly do not have all the answers and am not 100% green by any means. I don’t think that’s possible in today’s developed society anyway. But I’m working on it, and what I’ve learned, as well as what I will learn from others, might be helpful to the larger community.
Items for future discussion will be:
Renewable energy (solar and small wind) at your home or commercial location
Products from sustainably managed forests (frames, copy paper, building materials)
Sources for recycled bags, print folders and packaging
Sources for shipping containers and shipping materials made from recycled materials
Computer and electronics recycling
Print cartridge recycling programs
Carbon offsets
Letter campaigns to our vendors
Global climate change information
For more information about sustainability, go here:
Natural Step Network
Wikipedia Definition
Sustainability Institute
Earth Charter
ZeroFootprint Calculator
Raymond Baltar
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