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Alex Cooke
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Articles written by Alex Cooke

Fstoppers Photographer of the Month (April 2017): Felipe Gómez

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 2017, 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.

Fstoppers Reviews the Lexar JumpDrive Tough USB 3.1 Flash Drive

If you work in tough conditions and need something a bit more rigorous than the standard USB flash drive, the Lexar JumpDrive Tough could be the ticket. Built to withstand some pretty crazy ordeals, it could be a great option for photographers who frequently work in less-than-stellar environments.

Three Basic Lighting Techniques That Apply to Anything

Lighting is equal parts art and science. The science part often comes in understanding how different surfaces absorb and reflect light and how that impacts the setup you'll require. This great video shows you three general situations and the unique considerations you must make in each of them to properly light your subject.

How to Give Modern Footage a Super 8 Look in Premiere Pro

Sometimes, whether it's for artistic reasons, historical accuracy, or the sheer novelty of it, you want to take your footage shot with your super-fancy, ultra-modern videographic apparatus and make it look like it was shot on a camera of yesteryear. This great video will show you how to do precisely that.

Watch a Homemade Lens Being Built and Shot With

I thought I was a fairly apt DIY'er, but then I saw this next-level achievement. This man built his own lens from scratch, right down to machining the glass himself.

The Best Shots of All Time in Film

Sometimes, we admire them for their cleverness, sometimes for the weight of the meaning they carry, and sometimes just for their beauty. Here are some of the best shots in film of all time.

How to Sharpen Images in Photoshop

Image sharpening is one of the most important steps in a postproduction workflow. However, with a myriad of options and methods to do it, it can be a daunting understanding exactly what you're doing and why. This great tutorial will show both what sharpening an image does and how to do it.

Dealing With Fear as a Photographer or Videographer

Fear of rejection, of criticism, of failure, most of deal with many types of fear as creatives. Fear can be healthy, but it can also be paralyzing. This great video addresses a lot of where it comes from and what we can do to get past it.

How to Add Color to Landscape Photos Using Photoshop

If you take a look at the work of your favorite landscape photographers, one likely unifying factor is their colors are all vibrant without being gaudy. This tutorial will show you how to make your landscape shots pop by using Photoshop.

How to Give Portraits a Cinematic Look in Lightroom

I'm personally obsessed with the cinematic look in my stills work. I think it's timeless, elegant, and endlessly interesting. If you'd like to add that same style to your own portraiture, this tutorial will show you how to do it using just Lightroom.

How to Find Your Stolen Photos Online

If you work as a photographer long enough, your pictures are going to be used without your permission somewhere. Tracking down where that's happened can be tough, but this great video will help you in that endeavor.

Balancing Realism and Entertainment in Nature Documentaries

The term "documentary" carries with it an inherent expectation of a realistic representation of that which it documents, but of course, there are editorial decisions to be made that balance faithfulness to the subject matter with practical considerations. Go behind the scenes to see just what that means for the journey from raw footage to your television screen.

You Should Study Bad Art

When we talk about studying photography and film, there's typically an unspoken understanding that we're referring to examining highly acclaimed work. It does us a lot of good to examine work at the other end of the spectrum, however.

14 Things to Do Before You Take a Picture

It can be easy to pull our cameras out of our bags and start shooting, leaving the fate of the shoot to our post-processing skills and imagination after the fact. However, to really ensure we always get quality images that match our vision, it's important to be prepared. Making a habit of these 14 things will ensure that you consistently get those shots.

Fstoppers Reviews the 2017 Wacom Intuos Pro Tablet

Recently, Wacom updated their Intuos tablet line with a new version of the Intuos Pro. With many tweaks, the new version is definitely a step apart from the old. Find out if it's worth the upgrade!

How to Pose People Who Aren't Models

For many photographers, the majority of their subjects aren't models and aren't trained in posing. And so, it falls to the photographer to really be able to guide the subject to finding suitable looks. This great video gives you some quick tips on how to do just that.