Plastic Monkeys?

There’s a perfectly good reason for the plastic monkeys. Let me explain.

In photographer circles, there is a thing called a “365 Project”. The rules vary, but in general the goal is to find, light, shoot and edit an interesting picture and post it for the world to see. Every day – hence the 365. Many photographers take these projects on to force them to think creatively and just get out there and shoot. Last year, we followed Dustin Diaz as he attempted a 365. Many of his images were eye-openers and caused us to rethink how we light and shoot. His work was good enough to win the Flickr Photographer of the Year award. Not too shabby.



Knowing we would never succeed at a 365, Stacey and I sorta made up our own rules for 2010 (always subject to change, mind you). This blog is something of a photographer’s New Year’s resolution for us. We have committed to post something at least once a week and include photos where we tried something new or that caused us to stretch our skills in some way. If you’re following us, you will hopefully see some triumphs and certainly some failures. The monkeys fit somewhere in the middle. Let’s call it a photographic experiment.

One of the things about having a houseful of kids is that things mysteriously appear and disappear. These three monkey heads just showed up one day. I have no idea where they came from, who brought them home or even what they do, but they were lying on the table in the living room today when I was in a shooting mood.

Following the advice of several big-name photographers, the monkey pic was an experiment with images shot in RAW format. RAW images are basically the data exactly as it comes from the camera’s sensor – without any processing. In theory, using RAW should offer better color resolution and more control in editing. The downside is a much larger file – the RAW image was almost 10MB while an identical JPEG was less than 3MB. Whatever. Memory cards are cheap and plentiful.

With the monkeys on the seat of a chair and overcast North Light, I grabbed a couple of frames and dropped them into Photoshop. Then things got interesting. As you open a RAW image in Photoshop, you’re presented with a new window that has a zillion possible adjustments. I’ll confess that a year ago, this much information would have intimidated me. But, over the past few months, we’ve gotten pretty serious about photography and, now the numbers and options all make sense – mostly. The power here is overwhelming and I can really see us using this more in the future.

I’ve been using Photoshop for about a dozen years now and have never explored this deep. So, my suggestion to you is this: whether you’re using Picasa, Photoshop, Paint.net or whatever, dig into your software and experiment. It probably has some capabilities you never imagined and something you can use on your next batch of digital photos. And don’t forget to check your camera and see if it supports RAW format.