: Grip o' paper

Grip o' paper, originally uploaded by Parris Studios:.

I realized today, again, that besides numbers, an accountants best friend is paper. I see in my day job constantly and have for the last 8 years... print out that support, write some things on it, reference and put it in a binder for people to look at occasionally or not at all.

I've noticed as my years have gone on in my accounting job that instead of going paperless. which was talked about when I was graduating college in 2000 (ouch, that hurts to see!) we seem to be going the opposite direction. Print everything, in triplicate, and keep it handy.

There's not much I can do on my day job to reduce this, but I am trying where ever I can. If I can do something electronically, I do it, if I don't have to print it, I won't, if it turns out I don't need that paper, I'll keep it for notes or scrap or anything I can use it for.

But for my business and my career, I can do something about it and I am going to do it, said and done! From now on, my contracts will all be sent electronically, clients can sign it electronically and send it back. I may be one of the last photographers to do this, but I really hope that all other photographers will try to go paperless - help us offset the crazy amount of paper used by businesses! And a big thanks to our friend Krisitin, her signature has the "Please consider the environment before printing this email" and I thought that was cool - then looked up to see this light stack of papers. Seriously, I have a couple reams of paper on my desk, no exaggeration. And that's light too!

So lets try and do all we can to save some paper which will save some trees and do as much as we can without paper. Many phones can get Google Maps (I use it on my Blackjack) which is the same as the ones printed from the internet. Or keep a recycle pile, where you can jot down some quick notes or directions if you still have to use the paper. I think being in the beauty of Monterey helped clarify that a little more, me wanting Charlie to be able to grow up and go take pictures in a beautiful, NATURAL surrounding, not buildings with a tree here and there.