So this recently jumped upon my brain.
My family and I are from all different parts of the world, but we live here on the Island of Cozumel.
We have been here for about four years and will be giving birth to our second Cozumelian.
We have always been supportive of the eco-friendly lifestyle.
We try every day to keep our planet cleaner and of course to use fewer products that will harm our beloved earth.
But, recently it dawned on me to look deeper in ways that I wouldn’t normally do, especially when it comes to our photo and video business.
For example; something very simple - I never thought to switch to reusable batteries, or to use eco-friendly doilies, etc.
So here are a few plans I came up with and hope to encourage photographers to do likewise.
Plan 1: Reusable Batteries
Of course, change your OCF (off camera flash) to a reusable battery source or even better. If you want to advance in your photography, purchase a strobe; they are not too expensive and it can at the same time up your game.
Plan 2: More Eco-friendly props
Avoid using any plastic or paper for your session. We use to love using doilies for our sessions, especially when shooting kids.
Try another solution like cutouts of leaves or even using bubbles. Everybody loves bubbles!
Plan 3: Trash the Shoot
During our photo sessions we, of course, like to use nice locations.
Often we have found that the location is filled with trash and loads of bottles on the beach.
We have always picked up what we can, but now we thought it would be a great idea to encourage our clients to help us and even make a day of it.
Plan 4: Recycling our props.
We make a lot of hand-made props and of course, try to recycle them instead of just throwing them away.
For example, we use a lot of shells and wooden signs, mostly family sessions. Instead of throwing them away after using them so many times that they become worn and broke. We break them down and create new props.
A perfect example would be our LOVE sign.
Plan 5: Car Pool
For certain photo sessions, we decided to carpool with our clients.
We often do this with part of our photo packages. But we decided to try to push this idea to all our sessions to help emit less pollution.
Plan 6: Vegan Fur
Instead of purchasing real fur for our newborn sessions, we have taken the time to learn more about where and what we are purchasing. There has always been a huge uproar about using animal fur, and we will of course proudly be a part of this action. We buy only vegan fur and encourage newborn photographers to do the same. Animals should not suffer for the cause making a baby look cute for a photo.
These are just a few ideas that we have come up with to help save our earth bit by bit.
Our object is to create awareness and encourage everyone we meet to think BIGGER and more out the box when it comes to being PHOTOGANIC