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Alex Cooke
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Articles written by Alex Cooke

9 Types of Portrait Lighting Every Photographer Should Know

Lighting is absolutely crucial to creating a successful portrait, doing more than simply illuminating your subject, but also communicating, mood, intention, and much more. This fantastic video will show you nine different portrait lighting setups you should know.

How to Color Grade a Photo Using Gradient Maps in Photoshop

Color grading is one of the best places to have fun stylizing a photo and to add a recognizable personal touch to your images. This fantastic video will show you a quick, powerful, and versatile method for color grading your photos by using gradient maps in Photoshop.

How Grids Can Make Your Photos With Gels Much Better

Gels are one of the cheapest and most versatile ways to quickly add a splash of creativity and visual interest to an image. That being said, it is important to use them carefully to avoid the issues that can arise with them. This is where grids can become highly useful, and this great video will show you how you can use them in combination with gels for better images.

A Guide to Macro Lenses From 15mm to 150mm

There is a surprisingly wide variety of macro lenses available, each with different capabilities and specifications that can make for an easier workflow or more unique images. This great video will give you an overview of some of the best and most popular options and the sort of images you can expect to make with them.

What Are the Ethics of Editing Images?

Modern post-processing technology allows us to drastically alter or even fundamentally change images, and this has created entirely new ethical questions about the boundaries of digital manipulation in different genres. This great video features a seasoned photographer discussing his thoughts on the matter and how different situations change those boundaries.

3 Great Wide Angle Prime Lenses for Under $100

A good wide angle lens is a fantastic and versatile tool that can help you create all sorts of interesting images, but they can also be quite expensive. However, when you dive into the world of vintage lenses, there are quite a lot of great deals to be had. This great video features three awesome vintage wide angle lenses, all of which you can buy for under $100 on the used market.

8 Helpful Tips for Creating Better Vertical Videos

Whether you like it or not, vertical video is quickly becoming a more popular format. With more and more people using their mobile devices as their main means of entertainment and information consumption, vertical video is becoming a natural means of delivering content, though it takes a different way of thinking, particularly since most professional devices are designed for horizontal creation. This great video will give you eight tips to improve your vertical videos.

5 Great Photo Editing Tricks in Lightroom

You might think that Photoshop is the place for more advanced edits, and while that is generally true, it often surprises people just how much you can get done using only Lightroom. This excellent video will show you five great editing tricks to take your images further when working in Lightroom.

How to Use Lighting Gels to Change the Color of the Sky

Traditionally, you probably think of using color gels to change the hue of your subjects or to add a splash of color to a backdrop, but with this clever technique, you can use color gels to change the color of the sky. This great video will show you the theory behind the technique and how to change the sky to whatever color you please.

Small, Sharp, and Cheap: A Review of the Samyang 75mm f/1.8 Lens

Samyang has begun to expand their lens lineup into the realm of autofocus while trying to retain their reputation for being sharp and affordable. One of their latest lenses, the 75mm f/1.8 for Sony E mount cameras, provides a unique focal length great for portraits combined with a wide aperture, all in a small package. This helpful video review takes a look at the lens and the sort of results you can expect from it.

5 Different Ways to Choose Where to Focus a Landscape Photo

Choosing where to focus in a landscape photo can be a tricky thing, with photographers often resorting to techniques like using the hyperfocal distance or focus stacking. If that is something you struggle with, this excellent video will show you five different ways to choose where to focus in a landscape image.

How to Create Interesting Black and White Landscape Photos Using Lightroom

When you think of landscape photography, you likely think of vividly colorful images. However, there is an entirely different world of black and white landscapes that can be just as entrancing in their own way, and this great video will show you how you can create them using Lightroom.