Profile picture for Alex Cooke
Editor-in-Chief

Alex Cooke

Cleveland, OH
18 3 Star badge
1 10+ Portfolio Images badge
1 Editor's Pick badge
1 Top Contributor badge

Articles from Alex Cooke

Smart Masking Shortcuts to Speed Up Lightroom Classic

Masking in Lightroom Classic can feel slow and clumsy when every move depends on the mouse. Keyboard shortcuts change that, letting you move faster, stay in the flow, and spend more time actually shaping the image instead of hunting through panels.

Sony’s 1.4x Macro GM: What Extreme Close-Up Really Looks Like

Pushing past the usual 1:1 macro limit changes how you see small subjects, from jewelry to tiny objects that normally look flawless at a glance. At 1.4x and even 2.8x magnification, every scratch, engraving, and tiny imperfection jumps out, so your lens and technique decide whether that detail works for you or against you.

Thunderbolt 5 Dock Showdown: Anker Prime TB5 vs CalDigit TS5

Thunderbolt 5 docks are starting to decide how your desk actually works, from power delivery to how many high-resolution screens you can run at once. If you spend long hours culling, editing, and tethered to a laptop on photography jobs, you are dealing with the same pain points that photographers run into when a dock chokes their storage or display setup.

Rolling Shutter: Why Your Golf Club Looks Bent in Photos

If you've ever photographed a fast-moving propeller and watched it turn into a series of curved boomerangs, or captured a golf swing where the club looks like overcooked spaghetti, you've met rolling shutter. It's one of the most misunderstood phenomena in digital photography, but don't worry, I'm here to teach you what you need to know.

The Real-World Pros and Cons of OM System’s 50-200mm f/2.8 Lens

Long wildlife zooms usually force you to choose between reach, speed, and weight, and you often end up sacrificing at least one. The OM SYSTEM M.Zuiko Digital ED 50-200mm f/2.8 IS PRO lens is built to pull off a 100–400mm full frame equivalent range while still being something you can actually carry around a bird park for hours.

The Simple Lighting Trick That Balances Background Exposure

Lighting a background with a single light sounds simple until you see the ugly gradient running from one side to the other. If you shoot portraits or products against seamless paper, getting that background clean and even can save time, keep your images consistent, and give you more control over how everything looks in camera.

How to Master Generative Fill in Photoshop

AI editing is no longer a side feature you occasionally test and forget. It is now a core part of how you clean, build, and style images in Photoshop, and it changes how much time you spend behind the computer.

Three All-In-One Zooms, One Sony Body: How to Pick the Right Lens for You

Choosing an all-in-one zoom for a Sony full frame body is a big commitment, because that lens often lives on the camera for trips, family events, and everyday shooting. This video looks at three very different takes on the 20-200mm class and digs into which one is right for you.

Stop Crowding Your Landscapes: The Power of Negative Space

You are taught early to fill the frame, pack every corner with mountains, clouds, and texture until nothing feels empty. The video above argues that if you never leave room around your subject, your landscapes can start to feel crowded, noisy and harder for viewers to read at a glance.

Why You Still Can't Buy a Fujifilm X100VI or Ricoh GR IV: The Real Story Behind the Shortages

If you've tried to buy a Fujifilm X100VI or Ricoh GR IV in the past year, you already know the frustration. These cameras aren't just hard to find; they're nearly impossible to buy at retail price without waiting months or entering lotteries. The X100VI has been plagued by shortages since its launch, and the GR IV, officially launched on August 20, 2025, immediately followed the same pattern despite its significantly higher price tag.

Why This $1,500 Pocket Camera Still Tempts Photographers

The Ricoh GR series has a strange pull on people who care about having a real camera in their pocket instead of a phone, and the new GR IV pushes that idea further while charging a premium that competes with serious interchangeable-lens bodies. If you care about spontaneous street shots, low-key family moments, or just always having a compact on you, the tradeoffs in this body matter more than the usual spec sheet bragging rights to photographers.

10 Crazy Photography Facts You Didn't Know

Photography is full of surprising history, weird technical quirks, and fascinating stories that even experienced photographers might not know. From the mathematical precision behind f-stops to cameras abandoned on the moon, these facts reveal just how wild the world of photography really is.

Fstoppers Photographer of the Month (November 2025): Ric Lewis

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 2025, 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.

Wildlife Reach Without the Weight: Why This Two-Lens Kit Just Works

Pushing into serious wildlife and nature work means dealing with long focal lengths, unstable weather, and subjects that do not care about your comfort. Pairing a compact body with the right two-lens kit can be the difference between missing a fleeting bird and walking away with a sharp frame from a safe distance.

Hasselblad X2D II 100C Review: An Artist’s Medium Format Tool

The Hasselblad X2D II 100C medium format mirrorless camera is built as a stills-only body for when you want an art tool rather than a hybrid spec sheet trophy. This review focuses on how it actually changes the way you shoot, from waist-level landscapes and cars to tracking subjects that don’t stand still.

Stop Blowing Out Skies: Simple Dynamic Range Fixes for Wildlife Shots

When you come home with a file where the sky is blown out and the shadows are empty, the real culprit is usually dynamic range. Understanding how much brightness your camera can actually record is what lets you keep a bird sitting in both sun and shade looking believable.

The Best and Worst Lenses of 2025

New lenses landed fast in 2025, and not all of them earned a spot in a working kit. Here are the best and worst lenses of the year. 

What Really Killed Minolta? A Post-Mortem

Before the "Big Two" dominated professional photography, there was a "Big Five." Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, and Minolta all competed for market share in the film era, and among them, Minolta wasn't just a player. They were arguably the most innovative of the entire pack.

The Wedding Photography Workflow That Actually Makes Money

Wedding photography looks crowded, stressful, and hard to break into, especially if you are trying to turn it into a full-time income. In this video, a seasoned pro argues that most of the pressure disappears once you treat weddings like a repeatable business and workflow instead of a one-off creative gamble.

The Canon R6 Mark III: Hidden Strengths and Hard Limits

Canon is pushing its mid-tier hybrid line hard, and the EOS R6 Mark III is where that strategy becomes very real. If you shoot portraits, events, or weddings and want one body that can track eyes at high speed while still offering serious video options, this one sits in a very specific sweet spot.

Why Your Building Photos Look Wrong and How Shift Fixes Them

Tilt-shift lenses are one of the most direct ways to control perspective instead of fixing it later on a screen. If you ever point a camera at a building and hate how it seems to fall backward, this is the type of tool that changes how you work.

Wildlife Light Mistakes That Are Ruining Your Safari Shots

When your wildlife images all start to look the same, it usually comes down to a few habits you repeat without noticing. Breaking those habits matters if you want your time in the bush to produce more than documentary shots of animals.

These Upgrades Are More Important Than Your Next Lens

You've got $1,000 saved. You're on B&H, late at night, your credit card within arm's reach. Your cart has that shiny new f/1.4 prime lens sitting in it. You know the one. You've watched 10 YouTube reviews. You've pixel-peeped the sample images. You can already imagine the creamy bokeh, the low-light performance, the look it will give your photos. That characteristic rendering everyone talks about in the forums. You are one click away from that hit of dopamine, that feeling of a fresh start, the promise that this piece of glass will finally unlock your creative potential.

The Simple Lighting Trick That Fixes Your Studio Portraits

Nailing a dramatic close-up in the studio and then watching it fall apart the second you zoom out to a full-length frame is frustrating. You get harsh falloff on the legs, dead backgrounds, and a look that feels accidental instead of controlled. Here's how to fix that. 

Stop Giving Away Your Images: A Simple Guide to Usage Fees

Usage fees are one of the easiest ways to undercharge on commercial jobs without realizing it. When a small local client pays the same rate for images as a national brand running a big campaign, you leave serious money on the table and take on huge responsibility for a fraction of its value.

Why Your Images Look Flat and How to Fix Them

Flat-looking images usually are not about the camera or lens at all. They come from choices about light, contrast, and viewpoint that quietly cancel any sense of depth.

5 More Utterly Bizarre Lenses That Actually Made It to Market (And Why We Love Them)

If you thought the first batch of weird lenses was strange, buckle up. The history of photography is deeper and weirder than anyone gives it credit for, and manufacturers have tried some truly bonkers ideas in pursuit of solving problems both real and imagined. Some of these experiments were brilliant engineering achievements that the market simply wasn't ready for. Others were solutions so specific they could only ever appeal to a handful of users. And one of them literally reinvented what a camera lens even is.

Canon RF 85mm f/1.4 L VCM Hands-On: Is It the New Portrait Lens Sweet Spot?

Canon’s new RF 85mm f/1.4 portrait lens sits right between the compact f/2 option and the huge f/1.2 flagship. If you care about how your RF setup balances on a gimbal, how clean your files look at wide apertures, and whether a lens really earns a premium price, this one deserves attention.

The Canon R5 In 2025: Still a Serious Hybrid Option

Deciding whether to buy a Canon EOS R5 in 2025 means weighing a five-year-old body against newer releases while still needing high-end image quality and strong video performance. Can it still compete? 

Why This 6K Nikon Body Could Be the Easiest Way Into a RED-Style Workflow

If you want a compact cinema body that can shoot serious 6K while still fitting in a travel bag, the Nikon ZR hits a very specific need. It lets you rethink whether you actually need something like a more expensive cinema camera once you factor in raw codecs, audio, and how easily it fits around everything else you already carry.