I’m pausing my latest series “The Party” because today is Blog Action Day 2010 ~ Water. I’m not one of these people who wears a yellow wristband because I think it will fight cancer. (Don’t give me crap about it, My Mom has cancer but nobody wears a wristband for her so shut up). But I do think that people everywhere should have access to clean water. It seems like such a basic idea that I can’t believe that everyday people either don’t have access to water or the incredible efforts that they have to go through in order to have water.  So please get involved. Get educated, do whatever you need to do thats right for you. Just don’t ignore it. People are literally dying of thirst!

Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted.

Access to clean water is not just a human rights issue. It’s an environmental issue. An animal welfare issue. A sustainability issue. Water is a global issue, and it affects all of us.

• Water as a Human Right: In July, the United Nations declared access to clean water and sanitation a human right over objection from the United States. Today, nearly one billion people lack basic access to safe drinking water
• Women: In Africa, women are predominantly responsible for collecting water. They walk over 40 billion hours each year carrying cisterns weighing up to 40 pounds to gather water for their community, which is usually still not safe to drink.
• Children: Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions.
• Polluted Oceans: Not only is pollution bad for the environment, it’s also expensive! Death and disease caused by polluted coastal waters costs the global economy $12.8 billion a year.
• Uninhabitable Rivers: Today, 40% of America’s rivers and 46% of America’s lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life. That’s not surprising considering the fact that 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm water, and industrial waste are discharged into US waters annually.
• Food Footprint: Do you know the water footprint of your food? For example, 75 liters of water are required to make a glass of beer and 15,500 liters to make a kilogram of beef.
• Water Wars: Many scholar, researchers and political analysts attribute the conflict in Darfur at least in part to lack of access to water. In fact, a report commissioned by the UN Development Program found that in the 21st century, water scarcity will become one of the leading causes of conflict in Africa.

• Water & Poverty: A lack of water contributes to poverty, with parents and children too ill or too busy collecting water to go to school and work. Water poverty also undermines progress poor countries are making on health – with half of hospital beds taken by people suffering with diarrhoea and dysentery.
• Technology Footprint: On an average day, 500 billion liters of water travel through US power plants to power all the technology that we use every day. For example, that shiny new iPhone in your pocket requires half a liter of water to charge. That may not seem like much, but with approximately 6.4 million active iPhones in the US, that’s 3.2 million liters to charge those alone.
• Bottled Water: Even though people in the US have access to clean water from their taps, they drink an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year. Over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled.
• Farmers vs. Animals: As water becomes scarcer in Africa, farmers not only compete with each other but also with other animals, including elephants. Forced into close contact with farmers, elephants destroy crops and wreak havoc on agriculture, causing farmers in turn to resort to violence in order to protect their crops and water sources.
• Fashion Footprint: That cotton t-shirt you’re wearing right now took 400 gallons of water to produce, and your jeans required an extra 1800 gallons. Not wearing cotton? The dyes and synthetic fibers used to make your clothes create waste that’s among the many contributors to water pollution.

I was lucky enough to photograph a local band called “The Dad Beats” who were playing a befit gig for a local school. The cool thing about this band is that they are all “Dads” of the kids who attend the school. Some are professional musicians, some have regular day jobs, etc but they play for the love of the kids and for the love of the music.  Catch them whenever you can!

My good friend Ester loaned me her iTTL Flash, so I could try out some fun lighting attempts. I’m pretty pleased with what I got out of it. My buddy Tony works with Ron Thorn at Thorn Custom Guitars & Inlay and every year they have a big party at the shop. Everyone pulls out Thorn Guitars and its an instant party! A really good time!

The thing is that it was raining like mad! They had four Pop Up Tents setup to play under but it was pretty tight quarters.  The hard part was to dodge huge rain drops and drips while placing the strobes in a way that would not blind the musicians.

I’m pretty pleased overall!

Shot this with my D300 ~ Di622 Speedlight (Borrowed) and SB-900 (Commander Mode)