Making Wedding Photography Green Being environmentally responsible makes sense.   Traditionally, photography has never been very earth friendly because the chemicals used to produce and process film and photographic paper are considered hazardous waste.

The worst offenders in some ways are the small or home darkrooms.  While the large labs produce more chemicals that have to be properly disposed of, it is the smaller labs and the home darkrooms that are the most wasteful of the chemicals.  The home darkroom operator is the least likely to properly dispose of it quite often the processing chemicals are just poured down the drain!

Here is what I do that can make your wedding photography more environmentally friendly.

• I shoot completely digitally, so there is no film production and processing chemicals used to create your wedding story.  Also, this allows me to print only the images that I want printed, rather than every image.  Even if you don’t take any other measures, this is a significant advancement for the environment.
• All the weddings I photograph come with a DVD to view your images on your computer.  By viewing your images this way, you have not made any additional environmental impact.  (If you would like suggestions on software to view and organize the images, please let me know.)
• I am now offering credit towards your album in lieu of proof prints to reduce the amount of paper and chemicals used.  This will allow you to get additional album pages of the images you want, rather than having all the images in a box.  It is also possible with my new cart system to do a "short run" of proofs that will allow you to choose a smaller number of images that you would like printed.
• If you would still like some sort of proofing, I am now offering press printed proof books instead of proofs as an even exchange.  The press printing process does have some negative impacts on the environment with the production of the inks and the use of paper, but it is lower because of the lack of photographic chemicals and the ability to print on both sides of the paper.
• For your final album, I offer albums that are made of man-made material in addition to the leather options.
• Your album may also be printed using a press printed format to avoid the chemicals and animal gelatin used in traditional photographic printing processes.

If anyone knows of any other ways to help me be more green, please let me know!