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Alex Cooke
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Articles written by Alex Cooke

How to Dodge and Burn Photos in Lightroom

Dodging and burning is one of the most fundamental and versatile techniques any photographer can use to post-process their photos. However, you do not always need Photoshop to do it. This great video will show you how to dodge and burn your photos in Lightroom.

Lighting and Posing Tips for Swimwear and Boudoir Photos

Posing can be a tricky thing to master, and there are special considerations you have to make when you are on a swimwear or boudoir shoot. This excellent video will give you lots of helpful lighting and posing tips for both swimwear and boudoir photography.

What Are Your Worst Photography Habits?

No photographer is perfect, and we all have our bad habits that we should probably break. What are your bad habits? This interesting video features a photographer detailing five of his and the effects they have.

Fast and Sharp: A Look at the Sigma 35mm f/1.2 DG DN Art Lens

Sigma's Art series of lenses is loved by many photographers for its combination of great optical quality and relatively affordable prices that often undercut first party manufacturers by around 50 percent. Their 35mm f/1.2 DG DN Art lens for Sony E and L mounts pushes boundaries a bit, as it is the first in the series with a maximum aperture of f/1.2. How does it hold up in practice? This great video takes a look to answer that question.

The Best Bokeh for Fuji Shooters: A Review of the Fujifilm XF 56mm f/1.2 R APD Lens

Any bokeh fanatic knows that to push the boundaries of background blur further and further, you need ultra-wide aperture lenses. But it is not just a wide aperture that can produce that buttery smooth bokeh. Lenses with an apodization filter can also make bokeh much nicer. This great video review takes a look at Fujifilm's version of such a lens and if it is worth the extra price.

Fstoppers Photographer of the Month (February 2020): Hananiah Aldrich

The Fstoppers community is brimming with creative vision and talent. Every day, we comb through your work, looking for images to feature as the Photo of the Day or simply to admire your creativity and technical prowess. In 2019, we're featuring a new photographer every month, whose portfolio represents both stellar photographic achievement and a high level of involvement within the Fstoppers community.

How to Correct Skin Tones in Lightroom

Getting skin tones just right is a subtle but very important aspect of creating professional portraits and setting your work above that of others. Photoshop has lots of tools for working on skin tones, but if you want to keep everything in one application, this helpful tutorial will show you how to get great skin tones working solely in Lightroom.

4 Helpful Tips for Working With Shoot-Through Umbrellas

Shoot-through umbrellas are some of the cheapest and quickest lighting modifiers to work with, and despite often being cast aside for other modifiers, they can still produce great photos in a range of scenarios. This awesome video will give you four tips for working with shoot-through umbrellas.

5 Tips to Improve Your Photography in Low Light

Shooting in low light can be tricky for lots of reasons ranging from needing slower shutter speeds to having difficulty acquiring focus. If that is something you struggle with in your own work, this helpful video will give you some great tips to improve your low-light photography.

8 Helpful Tips for Better Photo Compositions

Composition is one of the subtlest and trickiest aspects of photography to truly master, and there is a massive trove of guidelines, tips, and "rules" out there that can be hard to wade through. If you struggle with composing a compelling image, this excellent video will give you eight helpful tips to improve your work.

Great Advice From Five Professional Photographers

When you are new to photography, you can spend a lot of time practicing your technique and exploring your creativity, but there is no shortcut to experience. Thankfully, though, a lot of longtime professionals are quite happy to share the lessons they have learned over time. This excellent video features five successful professional photographers giving their best advice for new creatives.

7 Helpful Landscape Photography Composition Tips

Successful composition in landscape photography is often a careful balance of a range of subtle features and ideas that can be difficult to master. This great video features seven helpful tips to help create stronger and more compelling compositions in your landscape images.

Diffraction: A Concept Every Photographer Should Understand

Diffraction is something that can rob your images of sharpness, and as such, it is important to have a functional understanding of what it is and how to avoid it. This excellent video explains what diffraction is and how it varies based on different parameters.

A First Look at the New Fujifilm X-T4 Camera

Fujifilm recently announced the X-T4, and it contains a bevy of improvements and new features sure to excite photographers and videographers alike. This excellent video takes a first look at the new camera and what you can expect from it in usage.

7 Things to Check When You Buy a Used Lens

Lenses are not cheap, and you can potentially save thousands of dollars by buying used, but of course, you assume certain risks in doing so. If you are thinking of buying a used lens, this helpful video will give you seven things to check to ensure that you get a high quality optic that will give you years of good performance.

A Look at Three Common Beauty Photography Lighting Modifiers

Beauty lighting is a genre full of a range of nuance and subtlety, and one of the best ways to explore that is through the use of lighting modifiers. This excellent video will show the differences between a reflector, beauty dish, and scrim, along with a wide variety of sample images showing their uses.

9 Helpful Tips for Becoming a Professional Photographer

Being a technically proficient and creatively inspired photographer is only a small part of becoming a successful professional, which requires many skills beyond what you do behind the camera. If you want to cross into the realm of being a professional, this excellent video will give you nine helpful tips to get you started.

18 Video Settings Everyone Should Know Explained in Less Than 10 Minutes

When you are starting in video, you will probably notice that a lot of terms and techniques carry over from photography, but it is not quite all the same. There are some video-specific terms and settings you will need to know, and this excellent video will introduce you to 18 of them in less than 10 minutes.

Cheap, But Powerful: A Review of the Venus Optics Laowa 65mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO Lens

Most macro lenses provide 1:1 magnification. However, if you want even more powerful capabilities, the Venus Optics Laowa 65mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO lens can offer double the magnification of standard macro lenses, and it comes in at quite an affordable price as well. How does it perform in practice? This great video review answers that question.