Water Leaders Summit 2019

     Right before the fourth of July, Vagabond Photography had the pleasure to work the with The Water Council at the Water Leaders Summit for the fourth year in a row. It is always a fun and educational experience to work with them. This year’s summit took place at the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 26-27th.

Charles Fishman - During opening statements

     Normally as photographers, we go to a conference or seminar to photograph the event but we always seem to come away with something a little more tucked away in our brains by the end. This year, main take away was during the opening statement by events the MC Charles Fishman, “Every time we do a search on Google it uses two tablespoons of water.”  As a photographer I use the internet a lot to look up how to fix camera/lighting equipment, learn new techniques, to my guilty pleasure of looking up Babylon 5 and Star Trek memes. Never in a hundred years would I have thought for one minute that we really use water in that process. But Google and all the internet search engines do, its used in keeping the servers cool. It also made me think how much water goes into making a camera? So I did some searching and didn’t come up with an answer but I would wager it is many, many of gallons between the circuit boards, plastic, metals and glass in a camera.

Eleanor Allen & Charles Fishman

         It was a great day filled with great speakers from all walks of life. Touching on multiple subjects from Rethinking Water for People, How actions and awareness are no longer the domain just of the water sector and Rethinking Water Use: Risk, Stewardship and Value Creation and Rethinking Water in Corporate Governance. This year focused more on how we use water and the risk of pollution and running out.

     Eleanor Allen spoke with Charles Fishman to talk about her work when with the peace corps to bring clean water and better out houses to communities to prevent the transmission of disease to people in foreign countries. She went on to explain how some communities for all for clean water while others didn’t really care but once one community got on board with the project others seemed to be more receptive to it.

     During the last panel of the day they talked about rethinking water in corporate governance and as a person who has worked in many fields from photography, to industrial, and farming to commercial it really got me to pay attention while working the rest of the event. They noted if companies really had to pay for the water they use, items we use would cost us a whole lot more money but the companies would also be a lot more apt to stop leaks and save themselves money. One of the speakers stated that one of the biggest leaks for a plant is in its fire suppression system and that was mainly due to leaky valves or connections in pipes.  It was interesting to hear them talk about how Ford Motor Company managed to reduce their over all use of water in manufacturing use to help water stressed areas be more sustainable.

So think of how you use your water.

Xiaofeng Zhao and Valeria Orozco

Sweet Water Clean Rivers Clean Lakes Conference

This past week was a very fun week for Vagabond Photography we had the opportunity to team up for a second time with a great non for profit group call Sweet Water (http://www.swwtwater.org/). This time we were covering their Sweet Water Clean River, Clean Lakes Conference at Discovery World on the Lake Michigan water front. They are a fun and insightful bunch of people, trying to do a wonderful thing by organizing groups and companies and raise awareness to help clean up the Greater Milwaukee Watershed to bring it back to swimmable and fishable conditions.

The reason why we really like what they are doing over at Sweet Water besides the obvious is because it gives us the ability to photograph our clients in new(to us) and cleaner locations, in the past we would of passed by because of how dirty and unsafe they were.

Also while at the convention two of the afternoon presenters were from Detroit and Toronto. They both went into detail on how cleaning and restoring/reshaping the water shed in their cities brought people back to the waterfront and revitalized the area. We think this speaks to what Sweet Water is trying doing in our area which we believe can greatly benefit people in general and especially our clients.

The other part of why we this think this is a great thing is, in being good stewards of this blue spinning marble we all live on it is our duty to keep it clean for future generations so we don’t just flush our lives down the proverbial toilet.  In our free time at Vagabond Photography we like to spend our time fishing, swimming and hiking around local waterways so groups like this have a special place near to our hearts. Having grown up around the paper mill belt along the Wisconsin River we can remember times when cleaning operations were under way we would not think about swimming or eating a lot of fish out of the river. Though now it is a great river to go out and have fun on year round. So it’s nice to see several groups trying to clean up the Greater Milwaukee watershed.

We cannot encourage people enough to go over to their website and see what they are trying to do to help clean up the Greater Milwaukee Watershed.