Venus Optics has announced the launch of the Laowa 100mm f/2.8 2X Ultra Macro APO Lens for Canon RF and Nikon Z mounts.

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The folks over at creativeLIVE are broadcasting an entire week of photoshop classes. Classes kicked off Monday, February 24 and will continue to stream LIVE for free until Friday, February 28th. This week covers a broad spectrum of things available to photographers in Lightroom and Photoshop such as workflow, digital file management, local and global adjustments, photo restoration, selections, and my personal favorite, advanced beauty retouching.

Remember the cliché expression the eyes are the window to the soul? They aren't kidding around with that one, and when you capture a piercing look, you can instantly and easily grab the viewer's attention.

Many creatives are similar in a number of ways; we're self-critical, often riddled with doubt, and take losses hard. However, one commonality is tied up in all of these, and it can be highly detrimental: perfectionism.

A few years ago, on one of my first advertising shoots, I was asked to take a photo of a condo building downtown. All I knew was that the client would be bringing props, that we’d be shooting on a balcony, and that it would be night time. From start to finish, I wasn’t really sure how the ad was doing to turn out… and it turns out, years later, that’s still what tends to happen on commercial shoots: things don’t turn out how I think they will.

Our blockbuster action films have become so advanced with regards to the 3D and special effects that I'll go watch a movie just to watch it, and forgiving the lame dialog or bad acting just as long as the movie pushes the barriers to what I've experienced. Now Rokoko has made a suit that someone can wear that can generate a character of any kind to embed into a realistic computer generated space in real time. It removes the cameras and the time it takes to add in these characters in post production, and it happens in real time, so it's a massive saving for the production houses. It leads to new possibilities with regards to character movement and creating something that looks indistinguishable from reality.

Over the next few weeks, Instagram will be rolling out a new feature: the ability to mute accounts that you don't want to see in your feed, but also don't want to unfollow. Business Insider's article explores some of the mechanics of this new implementation.

Sharpening your images can either go two ways: oversharpened or not quite the mark of what you are seeking. What if you had full control of the sharpening process in a simple, straightforward plugin? Sound interesting?

Take a behind the scenes look at how the intricate ad for the game "Joy Kingdom" was created. Almost all of the elements that you see in the ad were shot as a scene, there was obviously some degree of compositing done, but the meat of the scene was done in camera. They even shot some stop motion elements using ice! I can't imagine how time consuming this shoot must have been.

Recently the studio hired a new assistant for the busy holiday season. While the intention was for light assistant work it quickly changed when the applicant mentioned they knew album design, retouching, and much more. Before sitting down with an applicant, have you thought about the possibilities of what more they could do for you?

Making a living in an oversaturated marketplace can be a challenge even without a global pandemic present to further shrink the marketplace. It takes a lot of tools, even some unexpected ones, to make it the distance.

Distorted portraits are all the rage in fashion photography at the moment, with elongated body proportions. Take it one step further by using highly reflective mylar during your next photoshoot. This article explains all you need to know to achieve this effect.