Photographer Della Calfee Focuses on Green Clients

When Blue Planet Green Living (BPGL) interviewed Bay Area artist and ecopreneur Della Calfee, we were intrigued by her self-description as a “green” photographer. How does that look in terms of her portfolio of images? we wondered. And, What kinds of clients hire a green photographer? We asked Calfee about these topics when we spoke with her by phone from her San Jose, California home.

CALFEE: I’ve been shooting pictures for decades, but it was only a couple years ago that I looked back at my body of work and realized that I was a “green” photographer. Once I realized that, something crystallized, and I have been able to move forward with much greater passion and direction and confidence.

To me, “green” means making environmentally conscious choices in every action taken. It means respecting life — including people, but not exclusively. So my photography focuses on clients working toward a better environment. Sustainably produced products; and green-minded services, leaders, and events would all be examples of “green” photography clients.

BPGL: Have you always done green photography?

CALFEE: For years, I was doing commercial photography. Then, a couple of years ago, I turned my attention to focus more specifically on green topics. The customers I’m looking to help with my photography may be a business, a non-profit, or any kind of group — or even just a single person.

If they have some sort of a green method that they need to communicate, I want my images to support their methods and to help them communicate to their audience.

Everybody’s pretty suspicious of advertising and marketing in general. The folks who are most interested in green truths are even more skeptical and suspicious, so I feel that my work can help good people and causes get their message through. I can help them inspire and convince people that green is smart; it’s the way to go. It’s going to save money and protect our resources — save the world.

So, in the last couple of years, I have really turned my attention in that direction. I looked at your website and at some of the folks that you write about, and I get the impression that these guys have all been at this for quite some time. But, I’m first starting out, because I’ve only been at it for a couple of years.

BPGL: It’s okay to be a beginner. We’re all at a different level of “greenness,” because nobody’s there; it’s a journey, not a destination.

CALFEE: It’s so interesting to see how each person has to make their own green decisions and epiphanies and changes, and we are all unevenly green. Somebody may be greener in a different way, and we are all learning from each other and becoming greener collectively. And I believe that it’s a beautiful thing.

As far as my commercial clients and projects, my favorite one is Wendell Rosen. It’s a law firm here in the Bay Area. It was the first law firm to be LEED certified. They have a lot of green clients, and they’re also into the sustainability realm. We started talking about the question, “What does a green law firm look like?”

So, I photographed every aspect of their law firm that was part of their certification. For example, I photographed the disposable pens with their name on them. These pens contain soy ink, and the bodies are made of recycled cardboard with a piece of wood for the clip. It’s a really great marketing piece for them, considering the kind of business they do.

They tried to go green with every aspect of their company, including the glue that they glued the carpets with. I photographed a whole series of all of these aspects for them to use in their marketing materials.

I pursue projects on my own that follow my green passion on different topics. One of the topics that I’ve been obsessed with lately is the resource of water, so I’ve been taking a lot of pictures relating to water.

BPGL: There’s a beautiful splash image that I had noticed on your website a few months ago. How did you capture that? You must have a very fast camera.

CALFEE: It was very bright out; and in the sunshine cameras work great.

BPGL: You’re too modest. Your images are crisp and beautiful.

How did you get started?

CALFEE: To answer that, I have to back up a bit. I went to school for fine art and commercial photography ages ago. Then, in 1992, when I entered the work world, I fell into graphic design, because there were so many jobs here in Silicon Valley. Doing that, I was able to make a better living than with photography. Professional photography is all entrepreneurial, and in Silicon Valley — even just to live here — you have to have a pretty sizable steady income.

I wasn’t able to do photography immediately, so graphic design evolved into branding. I spent fifteen years doing design in branding, mostly for software companies, but some for other types of companies, as well.

That was before I made my environmentalist discovery. And realized I have such a desire to help companies do what’s right. I want to put all of my efforts and energies toward helping companies and causes that I believe in most, and right now that is environmentalism.

I learned so much in my career leading up to this, and I’m using all of those experiences in my attempt to work with green companies and to help with the green movement.

Before I started at a software company, where I was on a team to re-brand them, I had started my own design company. I had experience working at ad agencies and design firms, and I was ready to launch into my own thing.

Like most new companies, it started off with a bang. Then I realized, even though I could market very well, and I could do the work, I had no experience in sales. You can have the other talents, but unless you have sales, things can’t really move forward.

BPGL: When you worked as a designer, did you take the photographs you used in your work?

CALFEE: No, though, as a designer, I had some pretty big photography budgets at the software company. One year I had $50,000 in my photography budget, and I kept saying, “Can you just let me take the pictures?” But, because I was a designer, they wouldn’t listen to me; the two skills just don’t meet. They finally did let me take some of the photos that we couldn’t find anywhere regardless of price, so that was pretty exciting.

BPGL: How has the change to digital photography affected your work?

CALFEE: The commercial photography world has been undergoing seismic disruption, where whenever something new is invented, that affects us all. It has been relatively negative. For example, when everything went digital, it was easy to steal photos, violating intellectual property rights. Congress is discussing these issues, which have been undermining the profitability of photographers.

There are so many ways to get up and running in my business, and all of the old ways to get up and running no longer work for photography. So the photographers’ associations are asking, “What are we going to do?” All the biggest photographers who have been at the top end and working for decades and have all the connections and have been doing these huge jobs are almost out of business now. In fact, the highest-paid living photographer today, Annie Liebowitz, is $24 million dollars in debt.

BPGL: It’s got to be frustrating to know how difficult it is to make a living as a photographer. Have you considered selling your photos to a stock agency?

CALFEE: Yes. I am so passionate about photography that I’m taking the pictures whether or not I sell them or get them out there. I could go back into branding and continue working as a designer; that skill hasn’t gone away. But as fun as it was, I didn’t realize how unfulfilled I was until I started doing this.

So we’ve tightened our belt at home. We’ve done all kinds of stuff to live on less in order for me to be able to move forward with this and see where it leads. I’m shooting art as well as commercial photography, and I have shown some pieces in an art gallery in San Jose.

That is a first for me — branching out into the fine art world — but my photos still have the topic of environmentalism and nature. So, maybe selling my photos as art is an option, even if selling them commercially has kind of gone away as a market.

BPGL: One of the first things to go when the economy fails is fine art. Are you concerned?

CALFEE: Part of me feels that, even when everything looks negative, if you work hard to make your product something that is compelling, and if you can make it good enough, people will want it, rather than the other stuff.

As a designer, I’ve had a few experiences where people say, “We have no budget for photography,” or “We only have budget for inexpensive photography.” And, so, I’ll put together my designs for the project — my layout. Then, I’ll look for the best photo that I would choose despite their budget and present it to them, saying, “This photo is for placement only.” I use it to help explain the idea of the design I’ve put together for the project.

They generally like the project and the photo. Then, when they ask how much, and I tell them $1000, they say “$1000!”

And I say, “Okay, I’ve got some low-priced images you can use.” So I will look for some from a stock image company, drop those in, and send them over. They write me back and say, “These are terrible! Can you keep looking?” So I do that and come up with some more. And I send those over, and they keep getting worse.

Finally, I tell them, “If I do this with inexpensive photos, it’s not going to be as good.” And every time I’ve done that, they’ve found the money!

BPGL: Looking at the photographs on your website, you obviously have the ability to get up close to your objects and get intimate with them. Is your art an analytic study or an emotional study?

CALFEE: It is both. I’ve always been both. I’m passionate about things in life. At the same time, I come from parents who were very analytical and into logic and critical thinking. They were math majors when they met, and I think they canceled each other out, because they created an artist. But I am very analytical.

I’m trying to capture what it is that is grabbing me or making me think and feel in my subjects, and I have been told that my images don’t have the usual veil of protection between the viewer and the image — that I have sort of removed that, and it is closer somehow. The pictures hit you a little bit more.

I have been told that I care too much, but it is something that I can’t stop doing. It was only two years ago that I ever took my artistic photos off the hard drive and allowed people to see them. Up till then, I would take the photos, but I would never show them to anyone. Now I’m trying to share my perspective and concerns with people.

BPGL: Are you shooting with a Nikon?

CALFEE: No, I’m not. I have Nikon, because I went to college in the days before digital. Back then, people kept saying, “Digital is coming, and it’s going to ruin everything!” They were right; it did ruin everything.

I switched over to digital a couple years ago. I was carrying my equipment with me everywhere I went. A friend of mine, who is a designer, said that he had a little snapshot camera that was really great, and I should check it out.

But I thought a snapshot camera could never be great; I mean, look at the lens alone, it’s terrible.

Then my friend started shooting and posting on Flickr. I looked at his work and asked,  “How are you getting these shots?”

And he said, “It’s from the little snapshot camera Della.”

I said, “Wow! Let me see that camera again.”

Finally, I went out and bought one. The majority of the photos on my site, EvokeImagery.com, were taken with this snapshot camera, so I highly recommend the Cannon G9. It’s 12 mega pixels, and it can shoot raw, and it’s fast. There are later versions out now, but I still use my G9.

It is limited to the lens that exists in the camera; you can’t change it out. And it doesn’t work well in low-light situations. But it’s especially strong at macro. So that’s why I was able to get in and get all those macro shots.

I don’t know if you have seen that picture with the grandma and the baby, but with this photo my big camera failed, and my G9 camera failed on me as well. I’ve never had that happen to me, so I had to go to my tiny back-up camera, and I shot that image with that small camera. I think you can get pretty good quality, if you are not going to print it out large or go on screen. As soon as you go large, digital still kind of falls apart, I say.

BPGL: Do you do any kind of Photoshop processing?

CALFEE: Yes, I do. I do tons of Photoshop. I would say that I am also happy when a shot comes out of the camera just the way I want it; I love that. But having had Photoshop as a designer, I have different styles that I like to apply to the images to bring them out.

I had the grass-Mohawk photo up at the Art Object Gallery in San Jose for a while. I want the green world to know that a grassed lawn is the worst thing you can do in the desert here in California. This is as much about what not to do as it is about what to do. Most people don’t know that, and see the photo as environmental advocacy.

BPGL: Aside from your passion for the environment, aside from not using chemicals now that you’re doing digital work, what actually makes you a green photographer?

CALFEE: I am struggling with that, so I appreciate your question. I certified myself as a Bay Area green business.

BPGL: How did you do that? What is required?

CALFEE: There’s an exhaustive assessment about being a green business. You have to check off a minimum requirement in each section for how you deal with water management, recycling, etc. Then they come through and verify that it is all correct and true. They also check with the utilities to make sure you don’t have anything they don’t know about.

Then they give you certification. You can re-certify only if you have grown in some green way. There are a couple of other photographers who have been certified as well, but their photos are not geared toward green markets.

I am mostly green because I want to help clients who need to communicate a green message.

BPGL: You find the best way to show other people’s greenness.

CALFEE: Right. And yet I can’t do that unless I’m showing how I am green as well. So that is why I certified myself, and I want to help others do the same.

Julia Wasson

Blue Planet Green Living (Home Page)