Earlier this summer we saw the release of Brett Ratner's "Hercules". The movie was a mild success despite critics' anticipations. Recently Milk VFX and Double Negative VFX houses have both released breakdowns of how they created the visual effects for the movie. Mike Seymour of Wired walks you through a detailed featurette on how Double Negative created the numerous creature effects for the film. In the second breakdown we get to see how Milk expanded the world in the movie with set expansions, matte paintings and other special effect touches.

As photographers, we often find ourselves at exciting places such as concerts, parties, and sporting events. Many photographers spend hours of their day working with other people. It is common to see photographers interacting with people and asking the people they are photographing to move a bit to the left or to position their hands differently. On the surface, it might seem that photographers are extroverts who love being out and about.

Profoto just released a video showcasing their popular B1 units on location with wedding photographer Brian Marcus. Marcus shows how he uses the lights through new York with ease, obviously taking advantage of the size and weight of the B1 heads. This particular video focuses on the NIkon TTL Air remotes that were just released.

Pete Souza needs little introduction. As the Chief Official White House Photographer for President Obama and an Official White House Photographer for President Reagan, Souza had the crucial duty of documenting innumerably many historical moments, a job he did with an empathetic touch that has made his work the model for many aspiring photographers. I recently had the chance to speak with Souza about his work, his approach, and his new film.

Elena Kalis's underwater photos are incredible. I have seen many photographers try this and it just never seems to turn out right. There is always something about the shots I wont like but that could easily just be me being picky. However, when it come to Elena Kalis's underwater photography, I cant look away.

"Get it right in the camera", correct? But sometimes you can't and sometimes you won't on purpose, but it works out only if you know how and when to crop!

There's so much we photographers can learn from watching what others in our industry do, whether we watch a tutorial or start an online photography course. But have you thought about improving your business by looking beyond photography industry?

I love 360-degree video. I've spent a bit of time with a few different brands on the market. While there are many things I love about the medium, the actual cameras aren't one of them. I don’t rave about them the way I do about perhaps a Nikon DSLR or Fuji mirrorless. That's because the manufacturers of these 360-degree cameras aren't making it easy.

Dodging and burning is an art in itself when used to clean up images. For example, when retouching beauty shots or portraits, it can take a really long time and require a high level of precision to yield beautiful results. What’s extremely frustrating is that our viewers and clients often don’t understand how much really goes into such work. Showing before and after isn’t really flattering, and showing each mask individually isn’t visually powerful enough. However, there’s one way to make it look abstract so that the model’s reputation isn’t hurt along the way, but visually strong enough that people realize the time put in.

Canon has released a firmware update for the Canon EOS R5 to improve the temperature detection and video recording time control. Tests done by DPReview suggest that the improvements are far from dramatic.

Last month, the guys at PetaPixel reported the first successful recovery of stolen gear due to the service Lenstag. In related and more recent news, this past weekend a pawn shop in Boston, Massachusetts did a little detective work of their own to recover a stolen Nikon D3100.