The Chris Gouge Show

In this episode I discuss the why I no longer use Adobe Lightroom Classic and now only use Lightroom (CC/Mobile) as my one and only photo editing software....... something I used to never think I would do as a serious photographer.

As well as that I discuss the new James Bond film, No Time To Die, as I have been a huge James Bond fan ever since a child so I am always very excited when a new film is released.  And also share some details on a recent trip I've just got back from.

Links:

www.chrisgouge.co.uk

www.youtube.com/chrisgouge

In this episode I discuss why you should focus on your small wins.

Most of us want success and big wins as soon as we start doing the right things, but this is not realistic and can often lead to us being frustrated and and feeling let down.

Often we can lose motivation because we feel like we aren't making any progress or that a goal is too far away.

The way to combat all of this and the way to achieve goals and stay happy and motivated while doing so, is to focus and celebrate all of your small wins along the way.

To illustrate this, in this video I discuss why going to a swimming pool and discovering I can't actually swim, turned out to be a success for me!

In this episode I explain why all success starts by taking care of yourself first. That's what I have been doing recently.  If You Don't Love Yourself You Can't Be Successful In Life.

Whereas in the past I would stress out about constantly trying to put out. content to my audience, falling further behind with things as I struggled to keep putting out videos on my Youtube channel every week and getting frustrated that I was seeing the success and growth from it that I wanted;  I've recently took some time out to focus on myself, get caught up on things and get to a happier place.

As well as this I also explain a slightly new direction I will be taking for the podcast going forward.

In this episode I discuss why you must be happy before you are successful and why happiness needs to come before anything else.

Due mainly to the Coronavirus pandemic and spending most of the year in lockdown or with other restrictions, 2020 was not a very creative year for me.

As a photographer and video creator, I took very few photos and didn't put out my normal weekly content.  So it may have appeared as a very bad year for me, but while my creativity suffered, it was still a very good year for me.

That is because I spent the year focusing on and developing myself, my mindset and my happiness.

One of the reasons I have not been as successful with my photography and video career is because I have had a negative mindset, focusing on all the things in my life I wasn't happy about and feeling as though nothing was going my way.  I suffered from a victim mindset.

As I discuss in this episode, I have greatly turned that around over the last few months and I am now much more positive, grateful, happy and optimistic and as a result of that I now have much more energy and drive to work on my goals, my career and my productivity.

If you have a negative mindset, how can you possibly work towards a big goal with the energy and effort that it really requires to succeed.

That is why I believe happiness must come first.  It is why, despite not creating very much, 2020 was such an important year for me and why I believe it has set me up to have a much more successful future.

Trying to jostle between working a regular job and building my own business and brand in my spare time, I find it very difficult to put out content consistently across multiple social media platforms.

For that reason I have been debating whether I have been trying to do too much and putting too much pressure on myself and whether I would be best to just put all my time and energy and focus on building just one platform instead.

I watched a couple of videos on YouTube by people who have already succeeded for advice .  What I found was Gary Vaynerchuk telling me I should diversify and create as much content on as many different platforms as possible - that I should be on every social media platform - and Seth Godin telling me the reason his blog is successful is because he focused on that and ONLY that.

Very confusing!  So who is right?  What is the best approach to social media and building a brand?  Diversify or Focus?

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With all the attention AI Photo editing software has been getting lately, specifically Skylum’s Luminar AI, I felt compelled recently to share my own thoughts on the software and what I believe it means for the photography industry as a whole.

I did so in a video on my YouTube channel and although a lot of people enjoyed the video, it did also receive more negative feedback than is usual on my channel. From comments to lengthy emails, there was a significant number of photographers who dismissed the technology completely as something no worthwhile photographer would need and some even dismissed me just for talking about it.

But let’s be real, unsubscribing from someone who only has two thousand subscribers because they mentioned a technology you don’t like, is not going to stop it, nor is that the way to succeed or get ahead as a professional. (And many who were negative felt the need to justify themselves to me professionally).

If you want to build a career from photography and keep that career successful long term, then it is imperative that you not only accept the world and the market as it actually is, but also adapt to it.  That is the topic I cover in this week's episode.

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After watching a video by popular landscape photographer Thomas Heaton recently where he discusses his concerns with Skylum Luminar AI, I was compelled to look more into the photo editing software myself and so in this podcast episode I share my own thoughts and opinions on Artificial Intelligent editing.

Skylum will soon be releasing their latest photo editing software, Luminar AI which, according to their website, is 'The first image editor fully powered by artificial intelligence.'  It will be able to analyse your photo and suggest which edits and effects you should apply to create a breath-taking photo, without the need for layers or masks.

Anyone will be able to quickly create a beautiful image without putting in much time, or seemingly effort and without having to learn complex editing tools or skills.

This might sound alarm bells for a lot of photographers out there, such as Thomas Heaton, and yes this may further over saturate the photography market with even more beautiful landscape, cityscape, travel or portrait images but I do have a solution to this problem and will share in this episode how you can stand out as a photographer in spite of this.

Watch the video by Thomas Heaton here:  https://youtu.be/zhQoktcr8TQ

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This episode is taken from one of my recent videos on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/8d6PYppNzAc

In it I discuss how to be happy....... well you might have guessed that from the title!  Late last year however I found myself feeling very low, fed up and frustrated with how my life was going.  After eventually reaching breaking point I decided enough was enough and that I wasn't going to keep living my life that way, that I was tired of living my life not feeling happy and not reaching my potential so I took action to make changes.

In a very short space of time I quickly turned things around and got my mentality in a totally different way.  So, in this podcast episode I discuss the steps I took to get myself feeling happy and motivated and excited for life in a very short space of time.

Enjoy!

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Subscribe to the Chris Gouge show for discussions on photography as a whole as well as all the things I learn on my journey and attempts to turn my passion into a career.  If you love photography or just share a desire to turn your passion into a career, then this is the podcast for you!

My podcast is back after I took a little break to visit friends and family and get back to some normal life now that restrictions around Coronavirus have been easing.

In this week's episode I discuss the idea of the confidence account which we all have.  With every action we take throughout the day we are either adding to our confidence or subtracting from our confidence.  We often think of confidence as this big thing which we either have or don't have.  In reality though it is all the small actions we take all throughout our daily lives which constantly influences our confidence.

Find out more in this episode.

Take a look at the Creative Live class I discuss in this episode, 'Six Months to Six Figures':  https://www.creativelive.com/class/six-months-to-six-figures-peter-voogd

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Subscribe to the Chris Gouge show for discussions on photography as a whole as well as all the things I learn on my journey and attempts to turn my passion into a career.  If you love photography or just share a desire to turn your passion into a career, then this is the podcast for you!

In this episode me and fellow photographer Lee Walker debate the state of photography in 2020 and the best way to build a career in photography in these difficult times.

Lee is a good friend of mine and an excellent photographer, he works in the hotel industry but is trying to build a career as a hospitality and commercial photographer on the side.  Myself, I am trying to build a career in street and travel photography in my spare time.

In this episode we discuss the impact of Coronavirus on the industry, the over saturation of the market and everyone having cameras in their pockets now.  We discuss stock photography and the changes Shutterstock have recently made which created a bit of an uproar and much much more.

We also discuss a recent Petapixel article which asked the question: 'Is Travel Photography Dead?'  You can read that article here:  https://petapixel.com/2020/06/23/is-travel-photography-dead/

Please enjoy.