eco-friendly wedding albums

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….

A conversation with Rebecca Shostak of Wild Magnolia Design.

GP: How green is your business - what green business practices do you embrace?
WMD: When I began Wild Magnolia Design last year, I built every aspect of the business around the idea of being as minimal-impact as possible, from my manufacturing methods to my customer service policy. I try to look at being “green” as more than just recycling, using organic materials, and reducing a carbon footprint, although those are an integral part of what I do. Being friendly to the environment also means choosing materials that will last for multiple lifetimes without needing replacement. It means purchasing products from local sources to support local economies rather than finding the cheapest deal possible.  It also means seeking out new products that may be greener alternatives to what is in popular demand.  Having personal customer service and a limited number of clients, purchasing equipment used, and making every book by hand also contribute to what I consider to be “green” practices. I truly believe that being green is more than just recycling your cans – it’s a way of approaching every part of what you do from beginning to end that takes into account how you affect the world.

GP: How green are your products - what green products/components do you offer?

WMD: My wedding albums are the most eco-friendly flushmount albums currently available. I am excited to offer cover options such as 100% organic hemp canvas, raw dupioni silks that have undergone minimal processing, and my completely vegan, unprocessed, 100% hand-woven peace silks. For my greenest paper choice, I was lucky enough to stumble upon a beautiful, thick, smooth eco-matte paper which is also archival-quality and 100% post-consumer recycled. The color reproduction is highly accurate and no one would ever know it was a recycled stock. My other paper, which is unavailable anywhere else in albums and is quickly becoming my most popular, is a watercolor-textured 100% cotton rag paper whose color reproduction is so accurate and brilliant it rivals photo paper.

One of the most unique and fun aspects of the albums is the choice of handmade endpapers I have collected from all around the world. Who would have thought that such gorgeous papers could be made from recycled and renewable materials! I derive great joy in seeing the reactions of people who open a Wild Magnolia album for the first time and see the endpaper spread!

I have designed my albums with great simplicity in mind, as I feel the fewer components an item has the fewer resources it uses.

GP: Why did you choose to offer green products and implement green business practices?

When I was 17 and applying for college at UCLA, I was asked to write an essay on why I wanted to be admitted to the design school and what my plans would be to use that education in the future. I stated that it was my ultimate dream to combine my talents in graphic design with my deep love of everything natural and organic to somehow aid in counteracting the harm done to our environment. I never want to let that 17-year- old girl down. Wild Magnolia Design is my opportunity to do something that has been my dream for many years. Although my business is small and my impact on the greater world may be equally small, I hope to do my share in offering a product of similar or even better quality than my non-eco-friendly competitors while improving the quality of our environment.

GP: How has offering green products and implementing green business practices affected your company?

WMD: Wild Magnolia Design is more than just affected by green practices – it is built from the ground up to embrace them! Every aspect of the business has been truly thought out to be green now and in the future. My goal is to keep Wild Magnolia Design progressing in eco-friendliness as well as expanding and offering more product options. The long-term goal for the business is to be completely solar-powered, using either our own panel system or by purchasing green energy, and running all website hosting, computer systems, and printers from clean energy. Additionally, I am constantly on the lookout for new materials to use that are even more eco-friendly than my current ones. I am excited to see the manufacturing world wake up to the idea of green practices and produce new green products!

GP: What are your hopes for a greener photographic industry?

WMD: I hope, more than anything, that the photographic industry will continue on its current course. Little by little, we see fewer and fewer photographers using film, and more and more going digital. I think this is fantastic. Although digital cameras are made of many non-green materials such as plastics, I see an SD card, in a way, as a greatly “renewable resource”. You can take hundreds of thousands of photos with digital technology without having to buy any new materials. Nothing used up, nothing wasted. With digital technology also comes online galleries and online proofing, further reducing wasted material. We have powerful and flexible Photoshop tools to make images look like film even though they are digital.  In addition, there are now several printers available that offer economical yet quality alternatives to traditional resin-coated photographic prints. I hope that more and more photographers take advantage of these resources and be conscious of what they use. I urge photographers to take a small risk – to let go of what is considered traditional, such as resin-coated photographic paper that never decomposes, leather-covered albums (the leather tanning industry uses some of the most harmful chemicals in the world), and printed proof boxes – and instead to invest in greener alternatives and in the future of the planet. It may sound dramatic, but the technology is here. Let’s do it!

GP: What is your favorite eco website or eco-product that we may not have heard of?

WMD: I just can’t get over Daniel Burd, the 16-year-old who came up with an awesome science fair project. Plastic normally takes about 1,000 years to decompose.  Burd discovered a microbe that can perform the same task in three months. Just incredible.

Another eco-product I use every night that you can find at your local Trader Joe’s is the Preserve Toothbrush. Also known as “the toothbrush made from yogurt cups,” the Preserve Toothbrush was designed by dentists and engineers to be an innovation in both oral care and eco-friendliness.
The dentist-recommended 45° curved handle and soft bristles guarantee a thorough and even cleaning of your teeth. Available in seven vivid colors, the handle is made from recycled plastic, including Stonyfield Farm® yogurt cups, meaning that fewer natural resources are used to get your teeth sparkling. Combine that with the Preserve's stylish design and reusable travel case and you're not only living green, you're living happy.
When it is time to replace your toothbrush (dentists recommend switching it every three months) send the toothbrush and case back to Preserve using our postage-paid label to be re-processed into plastic lumber for picnic tables, boardwalks and decks.”
As a horse enthusiast, I am constantly appalled by the amount of equine-related supplies cheaply made in China from nylon and plastics. Just recently, a quality equine supply company came out with a horse blanket (typically composed of plastic-based materials)  made almost entirely of bamboo. Not only is it eco-friendly, but also so soft to the touch, anti-microbial, and wicks away sweat. I am so pleased to see this blanket offered for sale and hope more items like it become available in the near future:

Thanks so much to Rebecca Shostak from Wild Magnolia Design for taking the time to answer our questions!  If you have an idea for a Spotlight feature or interview, let us know!