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Alex Cooke
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Articles written by Alex Cooke

What Makes Lightroom Photo Edits Go Wrong

Have you ever taken a photo you knew had great potential from the moment you saw it on the back of your camera, come home to edit it, then spent an hour in Lightroom, only to look at the result and feel strangely let down? This great video examines why Lightroom edits sometimes go awry.

Keep Persevering: Why Persistence Pays Off in Photography

If you're engaged in a genre like landscape photography, the simple truth is that no matter how prepared you are, there are things outside your control that may hamper your ability to get good images. This video is a great reminder that a bit of hard work and perseverance will pay off in the end.

Five Things Successful Photographers Don't Do

Every photographer is their own person with their own style and distinct habits, but there are some tendencies of successful photographers that tend to crop up constantly. Here are five things that successful photographers simply don't do.

How to Set Better, More Attainable Creative Goals for Yourself

So, we're a couple weeks into the new year, which is normally about the time we all start to give up on those resolutions we made. That can happen for any number of reasons, most often the goals simply being too lofty or grandiose to be reasonably worked toward. This great video examines how to set better goals to help yourself develop more as a creative.

There's More to Being a Good Photographer Than Talent

There's a tendency in photography (or any creative field) to look at the people who are naturally talented and envy the seemingly effortless ease with which they produce great work, thinking that you'll simply never be as good as them. That's definitely not the case, and this great video explores why talent is sometimes an overrated commodity.

Seven Quick and Easy Photo Fixes Using Lightroom

When you're first starting out post-processing work in both Lightroom and Photoshop, any sort of editing can feel like it takes a long time, just because there are so many ways of going about things and it can take a little while to get your bearings. This great video will show you seven quick and straightforward fixes for photos using Lightroom.

A Complete Guide to Organizing Your Photos in Lightroom and Maintaining an Efficient Workflow

In addition to being the place where you perform a lot of edits on your photos, Lightroom is an excellent program for cataloging and organizing images. As you work over time, you're likely to have tens of thousands of images stored there, and it becomes crucial to carefully organize your photos so you can easily find and work with them. This great video will show you just how to do that along with some other helpful tips.

A Great Comparison of Shooting Film Versus Digital

There's a lot said about film versus digital, and a lot of it tends to be one extreme or the other, but like most things in life, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. This great video takes a very balanced and honest look at the merits and drawbacks of each when used in a fashion shoot.

How to Learn to See Like a Camera

I've said over and over that there is a natural eye and a photographic eye, and the two are not always made to take in the world the same way. This great video gives an exercise for learning to think more in terms of your photographic eye, which will improve your imagery and ability to envision shots.

How to Create Mystery and Tell a Story With Minimalism in Landscape Photography

Minimalism is a nuanced animal: if you really nail it, the clarity and sheer power of your expression is palpable, whereas if you miss your mark, the photo looks empty and devoid of meaning. The tough part is that the line between these two is razor thin. This helpful video will discuss what makes a successful minimalistic landscape photograph.

Learn About One of Photoshop's Most Essential Features: Blending Modes

As essential as layer masks in Photoshop, blending modes allow you to control the way the program combines and applies different layers, effect, images, and adjustments to your image. While it's not critical to memorize each blending mode's manner of operation, knowing how each category works is essential to getting the results you want. This great video will give you a quick course in just that.

How to Shoot Great Images With One Flash in the Studio

When you think of studio lighting, you probably think of elaborate multi-light setups, and while those certainly have their place, there's no reason you can't create compelling imagery with a single light. This great video will show you how to achieve exactly that.

A Simple and Effective Technique for Removing Dark Circles Under Eyes

If you shoot almost any genre involving portraits of people, one of the most fundamental retouching techniques you'll want to know is how to convincingly remove dark circles from under eyes. This video will show you a quick, easy, and effective method for doing just that using Photoshop.