What is sustainable photography?
Photo: © Erik Luntang
As a part of INSPIRIT International Communications I am also a member of The Sustainable Design and Promotion Group. Because of this I had to figure out what sustainable photography is. Is it that I take the bike instead of the car. I power my camera batteries with solar power or ?
I did Google “what is sustainable photography” and got 2,230,000 hits which is far too many for me to look through. I looked at one site where they stated: “Sustainable Photography is a professional image services company with Sustainable Business practices. This allows clients to know they are contributing to a healthier planet with every image they use”. The owner lives in 3 different states where he at least must use an airliner to go to one of the places. There is also a photo on the website of his big van that uses more fuel than any other car.
BRUSSELS - BELGIUM - 2 OCTOBER 2008 -- Traffic on the Rue de la Loi towards the city center passing the EU Institutions. Photo: © Erik LUNTANG
I don’t believe we shall see Sustainable photography as something where we must try cutting down on energy and other resources while doing our photography. I believe we shall use photography to tell how the world is. Give us humans more knowhow, educate and expand our intellectuality. That may in the beginning make a few more carbon footprints than we like, but in the end I believe we will help make the world a better place to live in.
It is important that the nature-photographer takes the airplane out where the natures is and move from place to place in the Land Rover. That way the photographer can document the richness of our globes nature and make us aware how important it is to look after it.
Some will say that local photographers can do the same photo assignment as well, so we can save on traveling. I don’t believe in that. One must have the skills and commitments to specialize in his or hers field of photography. It is also good to have some neutral eyes to document things. We ourself do not see the same things in our own home as our visitors do.
It is the same that the manager tells the secretary to take some picture with her mobil phone for the next newsletter. Only the secretary and the manager thinks it is a good pictures, mostly the manager because it was for free (He believes). Everybody else do not see the purpose with this bad quality photo and the company have in matter of fact wasted time, energy, paper and ink for printing.
When it comes to the use of photography in communication I do not believe that homemade images done with mobile phones and other low end cameras is very sustainable for either the world or the organization that uses this practice.
By publishing bad quality pictures, and here do I not only think of the secretary’s mobile-phone photos but also all the Royalty free photos downloaded from internet or bought on a CD, many a director and communication officer forget that they in matter of fact are communicating a image of their organization, a image that tells a lot. If they at the same time try to save on layout and editing of text they certainly are communicating a kind of message about their organization and maybe it would have been better not to do anything at all instead of spending expensive workhours, paper and ink which will end up on the street waiting for the truck to drive it away.
Old brochures trashed and waiting on the street to be driven away. Photo: © Erik Luntang