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Free Webinar to explain the entire certification process from start to finish!  Join us Tuesday August 3 at 1:00 PM EST.  We will show you the real application and have a live Q&A.

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat today!

Leadership Circle and co-founder Thea Dodds' article, "Printing Green" was published in the Green Bride Guide. Check it out and tell us what you think in the comments section!

Leadership Circle and co-founder Dawn Tacker's article, "Marketing Yourself as a Greener Portrait Photographer," was published in PPA's Professional Photographer magazine. Check it out and tell us what you think in the comments section!

Join Me, Thea Dodds - Membership Director on Tuesday July 13 at 1:00 PM EST for a live demonstration of the entire certification process from start to finish. We will have a live Q&A where you can ask questions about the process.

Transparacy is the name of the game!  And we'll have a special promo code for attendees.

Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now!

McKay’s Photography has continued the quest to decrease the carbon footprint in the wedding photography industry with some cool new product lines! As many of you know, I have been a life long self-described “dirty hippy”, well actually only my friend Tony calls me that, but there is some truth to the name. Since attending the Rochester Institute of Technology in the ’90s, I have been very interested in sustainable practices as just plain common sense. This was a HUGE drive toward my vegetarianism and for years and years I have been invested in keeping my waste to a minimum. While there is always room for improvement, especially in a consumer society, I do my very best. No where has this been more apparent than with my Wedding Photography business.

The new Green trend makes me happy if only because there are more and more green options everywhere I look. From my super awesome brown canvas frame and album bags (Wegmans plastic bags in the winter were just tacky anyway)… to my new line of framing and albums, there have been a lot of changes in my studio this year. I am the first Photographer in Rochester to switch from DVDs to Jump Drives (USB drives) for the High Resolution image files! I’ve been scouring conference trade shows for these, and EVERYONE still promotes DVDs! It has been a frustrating journey, but I found some pretty brown ones to put my logo on!

Another awesome change was to Sustainable Framing! Not only is my framer less than 2 miles from my house, but I FTP the images to them and they print and frame whatever I need! I secretly call it the “stay in my jammies” special, because my buddy, Pat, does all the work! He found me a special line of frames that are reclaimed from: wood shavings, chips, sawdust, wasted trim, pallets, construction materials etc. The frames are a solid material with a smooth, fine texture! A bonus is that Pat is awesome at picking out mats and frames and I am terrible at it…. I just tell him to do whatever he wants and he always makes me happy that I delegated to the expert.

Next up is my GORGEOUS and BEAUTIFUL  and LUXURIOUS new eco-friendly album! Can you tell I’m a little excited about it????? I’ve been wanting to order a sample from this company since I first began looking into albums. I’ve been too cheap to do it and also too afraid to pick the images to go into it. I needed images worthy of the album, and realistically I knew that I didn’t have the clientele that spring for such an album. Worse still was that I knew that past clients would want it as much as I did! I was OK teasing me, but not them. Well, now is the time to offer this one of a kind, handmade, eco-friendly album with Japanese book cloth covers and a custom presentation box to store it in. All of my other albums are delivered in a cardboard box. OK, a fancy cardboard box, but still. So, I will also offer the handmade clam shell box as an upgrade to my regular albums as well.

Well, this post is way too long and I still have a LOT more to say, so I’m ending it here with a few images….

Is there a energy initiative in your area?  If not, want to start one?

I am just filling out my membership application for the Plymouth NH renewable energy initiative and had to share.  This is one of the cleverist little ideas I've heard of in a while.  It's turning solar energy into a community process.  Members join for a fee and volunteer to help other community members install solar systems.  In turn member's get a system of their own installed for a very reasonable price, a home energy audit and a host of other benefits.  It's so exciting to see renewable energy becoming affordable, accesible and a community-building opportunity.

They also offer a CD for someone to start one these in your area.  What a great idea!!

A lovely thing to read on the front of the San Diego Union-Tribune today! Here's a link to the full article. To paraphrase: we'll be the first state to ban grocery stores from offering plastic bags starting in January 2012. We'll have to bring our own, or pay five cents a bag for paper bags. Woot!

Why should you care? Check out these numbers:

• 19 billion plastic bags are used each year by Californians (how embarassing)
• 552 plastic bags are used by EACH Californian every year (wowza)
• A measly 5-6% of plastic materials are recycled in California each year (what??)
• It takes 500-1,000 years for a plastic bag to degrade (not to mention those horrible images of the Pacific Gyre, a.k.a. the Great Garbage Patch)

What creative things have you done to cut down on the number of disposable bags you use? What other ideas can you share about reducing your plastic consumption?

One idea from my family... we store our canvas grocery bags in the car. There is no other way we have been able to remember to bring them to the store with us - because we are parents and have lost most of our brain capacity. Even when I hang them ON THE DOORKNOB OF THE FRONT DOOR to take them with me, I forget them. So now after unloading the groceries, the rule is they go right back into the car. It also helps having them there for those spontaneous shopping expeditions.

I'm so excited it rained today!  We just installed two 80 gallon rain barrels and with just a half inch of rain, they both were flowing over.

I am shocked that that much rain comes off the roof.

We do not live in a dry area by any stretch.  We have more of a flood problem then drought.  We are using the barrels to catch the rain that has done a number of our brick patio and siding.  It is so cool to see how easy, effective and inexpensive this system is!  We bought the barrels for $80/each from Rain Barrels and more.  The shipping was free, quick and they weren't packaged at all. 

Installation took very little time and we hooked up a hose to water the garden as needed. 

For those of you in a dry area, you should definitely do this!

So the good news is that I walked away from a fairly bad accident with just one scraped knuckle and whiplash. The bad news is that our beloved Prius is bring written off by our insurance company. The really bad news is that our HOV stickers are also toast. We love our Prius. It works well for our family of four plus Labrador. I use it for client meetings, even hauling my long projection screen around for ordering sessions. True, it is not ideal for carpooling as we can get just two child car seats in the back seats. But we manage. At any rate - by necessity the search is on for a replacement car.

During my research I ran across this hybrid car scorecard compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists. They gave the Prius a score of 9.8 out of ten. Their scorecard has good, solid information about all available hybrids in the U.S. When we first purchased our Prius in 2006, it was an unusual choice, with limited availability. But then, as now, we like the idea of making a major purchase that supports alternative energy technology.

We are taking the time to consider the whole carpooling thing, especially as our oldest is entering first grade this Fall. My husband and I have a running joke about (not) getting a minivan. An SUV just does not fit our environmental values. I did some research on hybrid SUVs, which all seem rather pointless - we'd be better off just getting a gas-driven with good fuel efficiency.

I was hoping to find that electric cars were an option; but I think we'll sit out this first generation of all-electric vehicles. With a 100-mile maximum radius, the five-passenger Nissan Leaf is *almost* viable, I think, if California continues to install high-speed charging stations.

We are drifting towards purchasing another Prius. Did I mention we *really* love this car? If we can find a good deal on a used one, that would be more eco-friendly, methinks. But with the price of a new 2010 Prius being very close to prices for recent used models...well, stay tuned, we'll eventually have to return our temporary rental car. Which, not so coincidentally, happens to be a Prius.

There is nothing like a well-crafted image to bring home themagnitude of a natural disaster. If you haven't already seen this series of images from the Boston Globe's website, I think you'll find them worth a click. Powerful images, powerful tools. These have me thinking grandiose thoughts about how perhaps, if we are wise, such images can bring social and political pressure to bear to prevent something like this happening again. A girl can dream, right?