A follow up to the post about Green Photography studios. BTC Elements is an eco friendly clothing and gift store that "provides sustainable products that are high quality and stylish, inspiring consumers to create an earth friendly and socially conscious lifestyle." On the company's blog founder Summer Bowen describes trying to make a recent photo shoot for the company's online catalog more green and brainstorms on ways to make future shoots even more green.

Her ideas include

Say no to chemicals, photo paper, disposable cds - success! Since BTC is a virtual store with no print catalog or mailers, I only needed high resolution digital shots. At the end of the shoot I loaded all of the digital pictures onto my external hard-drive (I heart my e.h.) and voila, no cd! If you don't have one of these glorious electronic devices, try websites like Yousendit or flickr to upload photos instead of burning them onto a cd that'll end up getting canned.

Slash emission - success! It usually takes a small army to put together a good shoot - makeup, stylist, art director, models. This one was small, so I wore all the hats, which cut down on vehicles. Plus, we only shot at one location - the photographers home studio - so only one car was driven approx 4 miles for the shoot.

Carpooling/biking/public trans - get the small army into one vehicle and head to one location with lots of photo opts.

Lighting - shooting in the early morning and late afternoon provides the best natural light. Also, using reflectors cuts down on artificial lighting. Ya can't beat the sun when it comes to beauteous ambiance and energy efficiency!

Some of her ideas are specific to situations where no printing is involved but thinking larger could help photographers incorporate more green practices into their businesses. For example more proofs online instead of prints, more email/internet communication with clients instead of multiple studio visits which add up in terms of transportation use, recycled props, backgrounds and studio sets, etc.