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The MOOD Podcast

Matt Jacob

The MOOD Podcast is a long-form conversation series exploring photography, creativity, identity, and the inner life of artists. Hosted by Matt Jacob, the show moves beyond technique and trends to examine why people make work, how creative voices are formed, and what it takes to sustain a meaningful artistic life.


Through thoughtful, unhurried conversations with photographers, filmmakers, and creative thinkers from around the world, the podcast explores themes of process, mental health, ethics, purpose, legacy, and the tension between art and industry. Episodes are grounded, reflective, and often philosophical, offering listeners provocation of thought rather than formulaic answers to copy.


The MOOD Podcast is less about instruction and more about understanding, aimed at emerging and established creatives who care not just about what they make, but why they make it. 


At its core, The MOOD Podcast is the art of conversation, one frame at a time.


Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@the_moodpodcast

Instagram: @the_moodpodcast /@mattyj_ay

Website: https://themoodpodcast.com

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  • 32 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 1 hr 6 min
  • English

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  • Thursday · 1 hr 8 min

    What If a Photographer’s Fear of Failure Isn’t Fear at All? Psychologist Zahra Ciardi Explains

    I'm joined again by Zahra Ciardi, a registered psychologist and the founder of Ascendant Bali, for a second conversation about the psychology behind photography and creativity. We talk about what happens when a photographer's identity becomes fused with their work, and why that turns making, editing, sharing and feedback into a constant threat. We also talk about how to hold a sense of self that is clear but flexible. Zahra explains the difference between creating from the wound and creating from wholeness, why healing can mean grieving the emotional charge your photographs once carried, and how to train attention, presence and boredom tolerance when the world runs on 6-second focus. If criticism of your photography feels like a verdict on who you are, this conversation may helps you how to separate yourself from your work so you can create it, finish it and share it again. Other things we discussed: The chameleon effect: borrowing pieces of everyone around you when your sense of self is empty Non-attachment, and being the blue sky behind the rainbows and the rain What gives a photograph its charge The Body Keeps the Score, and small ways to practise presence Shame, the defectiveness schema and the 3 ways we cope: surrender, avoidance and overcompensation MDR, schema therapy, compassion focused therapy and internal family systems The question Zahra would ask to open the door to all of this inner work Listen to the first conversation here: https://youtu.be/keUo-Sq5sh8 Zahra's Links: https://www.zahraciardi.com/ https://www.instagram.com/zahra_ciardi/ https://www.ascendantbali.com/ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • October 15 · 51 min

    Q&A: Why Your Photos Might Feel Stagnant (And How to Fix It) - Moments of Mood, 4.2

    This is a Q&A with questions sent in by photographers from my community. I answer whether your audience needs to understand your photography, if a project shot in a few days can have real depth, how to deal with perfectionism, the small steps behind my own work that nobody saw, and what to do when your work feels stagnant. If your photography feels stuck or you can’t say what it’s about, some of these answers might help. Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • October 8 · 1 hr 11 min

    Why Photobooks Will Outlast the Internet - Matthew Genitempo (Part 2)

    THIS IS PART 2 OF A 2 PART CONVERSATION WITH MATTHEW GENITEMPO. In Part 2 of my conversation with photographer and publisher Matthew Genitempo, we go deep into his photobooks Mother of Dogs and Dogbreath, and into Trespasser, the small press he runs with Bryan Schutmaat and Cody Haltom. We talk about making Mother of Dogs on lockdown walks, why its pages are held together with packing tape, and the 3 smashed pennies on the cover. Then we turn to Dogbreath: photographing teenagers in the heat, and Dove, the boy whose words narrate a photobook he never appears in. Matthew also shares what he has learned about self-publishing, how Trespasser decides which books to make, and why he keeps his photography close to his chest until it is ready. In the second half of our chat you might just learn how to stop forcing your photography projects and let them find their own shape, and how to get a photobook into the world when no publisher is waiting for you. Other things we discussed: Why lockdown was a gift for him and his wife Ada How Trespasser started between friends Portfolio reviews, and shifting your expectations about book deals Why the photobook world is more reachable than it looks Pacing a photobook so people slow down The dead internet theory and the future of photobooks His 1 piece of advice for emerging photographers Listen to part one here: https://youtu.be/5io0kDgrdcs Links: https://matthewgenitempo.com/ https://www.instagram.com/genitempo/ https://trespasser.co/ https://www.instagram.com/trespasserbooks/ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • October 1 · 1 hr 4 min

    If You Still Question Your Photography, You Are Not Alone, So Does Matthew Genitempo (Part 1)

    THIS IS PART 1 OF A 2 PART CONVERSATION WITH MATTHEW GENITEMPO. I sat down with photographer Matthew Genitempo, the graphic designer turned photographer and publisher behind the photobooks Jasper, Mother of Dogs and Dogbreath. In part one we go deep into Jasper, the photobook he made largely in the forests of the Ozarks as his MFA thesis at the University of Hartford: the critique that told him to stay in one place, the Frank Stanford poems that shaped how he saw the landscape, the men who had cut themselves off from society, and how throwing out his shot lists and learning to shoot a slow large format camera fast changed his photography. If you're a photographer who keeps getting in your own way, your work feels scattered, or your most carefully planned pictures keep coming back flat, Matthew shows what can happen when you stop forcing it, dropping the idea of what your photography should be and trusting it to find its own way. Other things we discussed: Why the photographs that interest him most are the ones he doesn't remember taking Moving from graphic design into photography What Fugazi taught him about doing things his own way The 5-minute critique that told him to keep going The story behind the mysterious animal photograph everyone asks about Why he sees Jasper as fiction rather than documentary Matthew's links: https://www.matthewgenitempo.com/ https://trespasser.co/ https://www.instagram.com/genitempo/ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • September 24 · 1 hr

    Andrea Modica's answer to the question every photographer asks eventually: what's the point? E134

    I sat down with Andrea Modica, the ‘Italian Story’ photographer (as well many other books) who has made every photograph since 1980 with an 8x10 view camera and prints all her work herself. Andrea studied with Richard Benson at Yale, teaches photography at Drexel University, and has just published ‘Italian Story’ with L'Artiere, 40 personal years of large format photographs made in and about Italy. We talked about what makes a good photograph and why complexity matters more than beauty, how the 8x10 camera changes both the pictures and the way people behave in front of it, why she hands her editing and sequencing to people like Larry Fink, who curated her book 'As We Wait', and why she believes photography is a profession that is largely about failure. Other things we discussed: Why she left painting and sculpture for the rules of the large format camera Loading film holders as a grounding ritual inside a process full of unknowns Doing everything by hand, from developing by inspection to platinum printing, and why she never hires assistants Teaching analog photography to 18 and 20 year olds who want it Editing Italian Story from hundreds of negatives down to about 70 photographs The personal stories inside the book that the viewer will never know Larry Fink's foreword to As We Wait: sensual love aligned with darkness Why the print still matters in a world of screens and AI The myth of the suffering artist, and why trauma alone isn't complex Living inside the confusion of unfinished work Andrea has 2 exhibitions showing in New York: Catholic Girl at AMR Art DUMBO, Brooklyn, until 22 October 2026, and Italian Story at the Alice Austen House, Staten Island, until February 2027. Andrea will also be signing books at the L'Artiere table at Paris Photo on Saturday 14 November at 4pm. See Andrea’s current exhibitions: https://aliceausten.org/italian_story/ https://www.amrartdumbo.com/ Get the book, Italian Story (L'Artiere): https://www.lartiere.com/en/prodotto/preorder-italian-story-andrea-modica/ https://www.lartiere.com/en/ Find Andrea on her website and Instagram: https://www.andreamodica.com/ https://www.instagram.com/andreamodica.photo/ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • September 17 · 18 min

    Your Worst Thoughts Arrive Dressed as Your Best Ideas - Moments of Mood, 4.1

    In this week’s Moments of Mood episode, you’ll learn why I believe meditation is the most direct route to a photographic voice that is unmistakably yours, and exactly what it does to your attention, your creativity and the way you see. I make the full case for meditation as a photography practice. I share my own history with depression, anxiety, loneliness and cancer, the years of therapies and frameworks that never stuck, and how Sam Harris's Waking Up finally gave me a tool I could use anywhere, in any state. I break down what the research says about a meditating brain: the Harvard study showing our minds wander almost half the time we're awake, the 8-week programmes that change grey matter density, and the studies linking open, receptive meditation directly to divergent thinking, the mode where new photography ideas come from. Then I explain why your voice cannot be built, only noticed, and why that makes attention the whole discipline. Other things I talk about: The 10-breath test most photographers will fail Why meditation is not about emptying your mind or ignoring your thoughts How to tell a useful idea from noise wearing an idea's clothing Being present as a photographic skill nobody teaches The honest caveats: what meditation will not do for your photographs How to start with a few minutes a day Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • September 10 · 1 hr 51 min

    Richard Sharum On 600 Deaths And His New Book 'American Homicide', E132

    In this week’s podcast episode you'll learn why the photographs you're most proud of are probably the ones hiding you, and what a documentary photographer who has stood at 600 deaths says it actually costs to make work that changes something. I sat down with Richard Sharum, the American documentary photographer behind Campesino Cuba, Spina Americana and the forthcoming American Homicide, all published by GOST Books, to talk about photography as an act of empathy, why he believes the photo industry has abandoned the general public, and what happened to him after a year embedded with 4 homicide squads and 8 prisons. We go from his childhood in a mixed-race, low-income Texas neighbourhood to the night police framed him at 16, the week in a children's cancer ward that raised over $1,000,000, the Magnum editor who threw out 45 of his 50 best Cuba photographs, and the depression that stopped him shooting for a while. Richard is direct about team mirror versus team window, about why he refuses to go to Paris Photo, and about the sacrifice he tells every student to expect before they pick up a camera for documentary work. Other things we discussed: Why he says photography was invented too early in our evolution Hurricane Katrina, 7 months after everyone left Cancer as an equaliser: a $10,000,000 house next to a trailer park Objectivity is a fallacy; photographing like jazz The grocery store practice for connection Childhood photos of victims and murderers in the same book The image is the receipt, not the experience The famous photographer who admitted lying for access How a documentary photographer actually earns money Of Thee I Sing: the American trilogy and American Avenue (2028) Find Richard on his website and Instagram: https://richardsharum.com/ https://www.instagram.com/richard_sharum/ American Homicide Book: https://gostbooks.com/products/american-homicide Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • September 3 · 12 min

    Work Does Not Speak For Itself - Moments of Mood, 4.0

    In this week’s Moments of Mood episode, you'll learn the 4 questions curators, juries, and publishers silently ask about every photography project, and how to answer them in 100 words so your work actually gets seen. I take apart the idea that photography speaks for itself, starting with the Vivian Maier story everyone gets backwards, and share what Shana Lopes, photography curator at SFMOMA, told me she actually needs to hear from an artist: why she has to defend every acquisition in front of a committee, her test of whether she can write about a project, and why "I just thought it looked good" ends the conversation. Then I get into the difference between explaining an image and articulating a body of work, and why keeping the mystery in your pictures means taking it out of your artist statement. Watch my full conversation with Shana Lopes here: https://youtu.be/XCSvy5AIGsA Watch part one of this commentary here: https://youtu.be/bURDv2Jps4M Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • August 27 · 58 min

    Why Should Anyone Care About Your Photography? Shana Lopes, E130

    Learn exactly what an SFMOMA photography curator looks for, what she passes over, and how to get your work seen without an MFA, a gallery, or a 6-paragraph artist statement. I sat down with Shana Lopes, Assistant Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), to find out how photography actually enters a museum collection. Shana has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Center for Creative Photography, holds a PhD in the history of photography, and has spent over 7 years at SFMOMA curating exhibitions, acquiring work, and reviewing portfolios. We talked about how a curator decides which photographs get remembered, why she needs to be able to write about your work before she can acquire it, the one question every photography project has to answer, and the practical advice she gives emerging photographers trying to get exhibited, published, or noticed. Other things we discussed: What a curator actually does day to day, from wall texts to installation choreography Why she thinks about exhibition layouts musically Curating photobooks versus curating walls, and why she reads books from the back Trends in museum photography, and whether documentary is disappearing How to write an artist statement a jury will actually read Portfolio reviews: what to bring, what not to say, and when to come back Why an MFA isn't necessary but a community is AI, analog revival, and the art schools closing in San Francisco Find Shana on the SFMOMA website and Instagram: https://www.sfmoma.org/about/eteam-curatorial-staff/ https://www.instagram.com/lopesshana/ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • August 20 · 14 min

    Stop Explaining Your Photographs - Moments of Mood, 3.9

    In this Moments of Mood episode, I get into the question of whether we as photographers should explain our images or let them try and ‘speak for themselves’, why the readings you want to correct are actually a map to your photographic voice, and the two gaps every photograph has to cross, from Garry Winogrand's famous riddle to a passage in 'Art & Fear' by David Bayles and Ted Orland that reframes the distance between what you intended, what you made, and what people see. Other things I mention: The moment someone misreads your photo and the correction rises up in your chest Why you're the one person who can't see your own work cold Repeated "wrong" readings as a pattern, not noise What happens if both gaps close completely, and whether a perfect photograph would be worth looking at Explaining an image versus articulating a body of work, and why timing is the difference Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • August 13 · 1 hr 18 min

    Why Your Photos Are Boring - Photographer David Chancellor Explains..., E128

    On this episode, I sat down with David Chancellor, the award-winning documentary photographer behind ‘Hunters’, ‘Handle Like Eggs’, and the Taylor Wessing Prize-winning portrait ‘Huntress with Buck’, for a conversation about the moral grey areas of documentary photography, trophy hunting, wildlife conservation. David has spent decades photographing human-wildlife coexistence across Africa, sleeping beside trophy hunters for weeks at a time, documenting leopard hunting in Namibia that was later stopped, and turning the personal cost of that work, including the collapse of his marriage, into his most intimate project. We talked about how beauty gets people to look at what they'd rather turn away from, why access matters more than gear, how a photographer builds trust over years instead of parachuting in, and his current project rewilding the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the National Center for Wildlife. Watch this conversation and you'll understand how just one photograph can open a dialogue that could end an questionable pastime, and what it costs the person holding the camera. Other things we discussed: Getting fired from foreign exchange dealing and talking his way into photography school with "below average" work The lion breeder who learned to see light and made the phone call behind the Taylor Wessing photo If it pays, it stays: the brutal economics of wildlife conservation The gamekeeper in Scotland whose hands kill deer and delivered his own son Whether he has gone numb after decades of watching animals die Photographing the birth, death, and compensation politics of community conservation in Kenya David Attenborough, his front door key, and the cost of a legendary life Film versus digital, the Mamiya 7, and why he shoots one consistent format AI, authenticity, and what photography loses when everything becomes content Find David and his work online: https://www.davidchancellor.com/ https://www.instagram.com/chancellordavid/ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • August 6 · 10 min

    One Photograph Is All You Get Now, and Why That's Good News for Photographers - Moments of Mood, 3.8

    Attention has collapsed, and every photographer feels it. In this Moments of Mood episode, I make the case that this might be the best thing to happen to serious photography in a generation. You'll learn why the photographers who matter from here on won't be the ones who make the most, they'll be the ones who compress the best: one photograph dense enough to stop a stranger mid-scroll and earn the second look. I break down what has actually broken in visual culture (the capacity to stay, not the capacity to look), why posting more is a hiding place, and how a single ambassador image is the doorway that gets your photobook, sequence, and body of work found. ___________________________ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • July 30 · 1 hr 38 min

    Odette England Answers Every Photographer's Worst Fear, E126

    Odette England makes her photographs and then damages them, and this conversation is about why that is the most honest thing she has ever done with her voice. Odette is an Australian artist, writer and photography professor at Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, whose latest book Isn't X Beautiful is an autobiographical reckoning with family, memory and the limits of what a photograph can hold. We talk about growing up on a 200 acre dairy farm in rural South Australia where her father made Polaroid portraits of newborn calves for their birth certificates and her mother typed captions into family albums, and how those 2 modes of picture keeping shaped everything she has made since. We go into her definition of beauty, which is broken, rusty and forlorn rather than pretty, the year she asked her elderly parents to walk their lost farm with her negatives strapped to the soles of their shoes, why she believes photography is drenched in want, and what writing gives her that photography cannot. Odette talks openly about doubt, about being the least confident person in her own practice, about the drawers of failed work she now calls her box of potentials, and about the daily sentence habit that turned into something she never intended. We finish inside the critique room, on the questions she asks photographers who bring her work they cannot yet explain. Other things we discussed: Being refused entry to her school darkroom because she was a girl Being the only woman in her class Why the letter X sits at the centre of her book, and why the title ends in an exclamation mark The 170 English words for the act of seeing The folly of memory, wrong captions, and choosing to remember the fiction Her image-based retelling of Susan Sontag's On Photography Why she thinks moving forward is not always the right next step What she sees in students of every age that worries her most Find Odette on her website and Instagram: https://www.odetteengland.com https://www.instagram.com/odetteengland ___________________________________________________ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • July 23 · 16 min

    How To Find Your Voice Without Building a Signature Style - Moments of Mood, 3.7

    In this Moments of Mood episode I sit with a single photograph from my own archive, one I made by accident in under ten seconds, and use it to unpack an idea Cristina Mittermeier gave me: that the photographer is not a messenger but a membrane, a semi-permeable skin whose job is to let a conversation pass between the subject and the stranger who will one day stand in front of the print. I look at why the pressure to have a signature style is muting your photography, why your creative voice is not a possession you transmit but the shape of what you let through, and how ego, not lack of talent, is what fragments an emerging photographer's work. There's a version of your portfolio where every frame is competent, consistent, technically strong, and somehow says nothing, and if you already know which images I mean, this episode is about why that happens and what your voice actually is instead. I also get into the book launch that turned Cristina from marine biologist into one of the most seen photographers alive, why technically flawless photographs can be strangely silent, the unnamed photographer whose prints sell the man rather than the animal, the division of labor between vanishing inside the frame and showing up loudly outside it, why a style can be copied by a preset pack while permeability cannot, and a one-frame practice to try this week. ______________________________ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • July 16 · 1 hr 47 min

    Trent Davis Bailey: Every Photographer Hits The Wrong Notes Before Finding Their Voice, E124

    Trent Davis Bailey spent 7 years photographing a remote farming valley in Colorado, convinced he was making documentary work. He wasn't. The pictures knew before he did: he was searching for the family he'd lost to a twenty-year estrangement, and by the end of The North Fork he had found his aunt, his cousins, and the woman who became his wife. Then he turned the camera toward something far harder. His new photobook Son Pictures, published by Chose Commune, reckons with the crash of United Flight 232, the disaster that killed his mother when he was 3 years old, through his own photographs, family snapshots, newspaper archives, and the eerily premonitory artworks his mother made as a girl, including a drawing of a plane falling from the sky, made decades before she boarded one. This is a conversation for any photographer who has ever suspected their work is about something they haven't admitted yet. We follow how a photography project becomes a mirror, how a photobook gets edited and sequenced when your heart is too close to the pictures, and how grief, memory and image-making feed each other over a decade of work. Other things we discussed: Being tied to a tree for his first ever photographs, and why he's glad the negatives were destroyed The camera as a passport for a shy kid, and photography as a search for belonging Why he hides many of his subjects' faces, and the 4-foot constraint that shaped The North Fork Editing 60 pictures down to 46 with Trespasser, and handing his grief to the right publisher Rebecca Solnit's essay, walking as a way of seeing, and why "capture" is the wrong word for photography Watching a Hollywood reenactment of the crash at 7 years old, and how cinema colonises memory Becoming a father, and the New York Times op-ed that revealed what Son Pictures was really about Humor as an antidote to grief, and protecting play inside the heaviest work Robert Adams, reusing photographs across books, and what follows a decade-long project Find Trent’s work here: https://trentdavisbailey.com https://www.instagram.com/trentdavisbailey/ ______________________________________________________ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • July 9 · 22 min

    The One Skill That Actually Makes Photography Beautiful (It's Not Composition) - Moments of Mood, 3.6

    In this episode you'll discover why beauty in photography is made by your attention, not found in your subjects, and how reading your own form reveals the photographic voice you've been searching for elsewhere. In this Moments of Mood, I sit with one idea from my recent conversation with photographer and writer Tim Carpenter: that beauty in a photograph is form, not subject matter. Drawing on Robert Adams' book ‘Beauty in Photography’ and Tim's book ‘To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die’, I unpack what form actually is, why we have a bodily response to it, and how the way you meet the world is pressed invisibly into every frame you make. If you're an emerging photographer struggling to find your voice or make cohesive work, this one reframes where beauty, and your signature, actually live. Other things we discussed: Why photographs of beautiful subjects can still feel empty Tim Carpenter's confession about being subject matter driven early in his career Robert Adams on form as an answer to the fear that life is chaos Why the most moving photographs hold together barely, not perfectly How your body decides the photograph before you do Mindfulness and attention as trainable photographic skills A practical assignment for photographing the most ordinary place in your life _______________________________________ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • July 2 · 1 hr 20 min

    The Inner Voice That Stops You Taking the Photo And Lies to Every Photographer, with Rory King - E122

    If you have ever felt technically capable but creatively lost, this conversation shows you how one photographer turned a decade of pictures, and the hardest years of his life, into a body of work that is unmistakably his own. In this episode I sit down with Rory King, an Australian photographer who works in black and white, prints by hand in the darkroom, and turned 10 years of images into his photobook 'Gumsucker', published by Charcoal Press after he won the 2023 Charcoal Publishing Prize at the Chico Review. We talk about how photography found him, the darkroom as an emotional practice, his mental health struggles that nearly ended his life, and what it actually takes to find your own photographic voice. Other things we discussed: Why he refuses to scan film and prints everything by hand Photographing the same friends for over 10 years Handing close to 2,000 scans to his publisher and not seeing Gumsucker until years later The bushrangers and Ned Kelly project he first presented at Chico Whether the photography and publishing world is elitist and gatekept How to share your work and find community The role of family, friends, and sad music in his recovery Momentum, and why taking the picture matters more than the picture itself Rory's links: www.roryking.net www.instagram.com/kingroary _____________________________________ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • June 25 · 16 min

    What Koudelka's Photos Show Photographers About Finding Their Voice in the Age of AI - Moments of Mood, 3.5

    In this solo episode of Moments of Mood, you'll learn why the flood of AI images is about to make real, human photography more valuable, not less, and how to find the voice that's unmistakably yours. I break down what AI really means for emerging photographers, starting with VSCO's "your eye can't be generated" campaign and the paradox that the same company also builds the AI tools and sells the reassurance back to you. Drawing on Josef Koudelka's legendary photographs, the "revenge of the humanities," and his own work in a disappearing place, I argue that the crisis was/is never AI, it was handing the verdict on your work to everything outside yourself, and that scarcity, taste, and lived experience are about to become a photographer's most valuable assets. Other touch points in this commentary: Why your photography voice feels fragmented, and the real reason behind it The 2am fear that your eye might be "ordinary" Why a machine can render anything but can't be the witness What an AI company founder says about the value of the humanities The single reflection to find the one photograph that's truly yours _________________________________ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • June 18 · 1 hr 20 min

    Why Photographer Ridwan Didot Asks Every Artist "What's Wrong With You?", E120

    In this episode you'll learn how to tell whether your photography is actually art, why chasing technical perfection is holding your work back, and how to develop a photographic voice that's unmistakably your own. This week Matt chats with Ridwan Didot, a fine art documentary and wedding photographer from Indonesia who runs the studio Native Visual and approaches commercial work with the eye and patience of a documentarian. We get into one of the oldest debates in photography, whether there's such a thing as photography that is art and photography that isn't, and where that line actually sits. Ridwan shares why a photograph that still works in 50 years matters more than one that just looks good today, how 6 years photographing his own grandparents trained his eye more than any client job, and why he believes copying another photographer, or even copying your own past work, is genuinely impossible. This is a conversation about intention, sensitivity, function over aesthetics, and the slow work of finding a creative voice that's truly yours. Other things we discussed: Why your mother's old family photos might teach you more than any workshop The "demolition" theory of creativity: learning to construct a photo so you can destroy it What Rick Rubin's The Creative Act gets right about making work without needing approval How Diane Arbus reframed the relationship between the subject and the photograph Why insecurity, used honestly, can be a tool rather than a weakness Alfred Adler, the "neutral position", and how psychology shapes the photographer The Photographer's Playbook and the danger of photographing feelings badly Why the love and care you put into a frame is visible in the final image The one question Ridwan asks every artist he meets Ridwan's profile: https://www.instagram.com/ridwandidot/ ___________________________ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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  • June 11 · 1 hr 40 min

    Your Body Decides the Photograph Before You Do - Photographer Tim Carpenter, E119

    Matt sits down with photographer, writer, and educator Tim Carpenter, author of 'To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die' and photobooks such as 'Local Objects', 'Little' and 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road', for a deep conversation on the philosophy beneath the photographic image. In this episode you will learn a way to understand why the form of a photograph, not its subject, is where its meaning and beauty actually live, and how working with a camera can teach you to make peace with a world that will never bend to your wishes. We explore the 'broken self' and the gap between the real and the ideal, why form is everything that is not in front of the camera, the difference between the depicted and the detected, how the body and the camera move through the world as a single instrument, why beauty in a photograph is a fleeting moment of equilibrium, and how a photographer can build a meaningful body of work and a real audience without chasing scale. Other things we discussed: Why great art resists interpretation, and the ethics of meeting a subject as something singular The exposure test that reveals whether you truly care about form How Tim moved from being subject-matter driven to understanding structure Reading his own emotional distance in the photographs of Local Objects The pinned butterfly problem in portrait photography What Robert Adams wrote in a two-page handwritten letter Why Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes may not help working photographers The anti-solipsism machine, and how the camera refuses your projections The loss behind Bucks Pond Road and the books that became a loose trilogy Why you do not need a big audience to make work that matters Tim's links: Website: https://www.timcarpenterphotography.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timcarpenter ___________________ Message me, leave a comment and join in the conversation! Support the show _________________________________ Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can listen and watch full extended and ad-free episodes in my community - The MOOD Insiders - where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as meet with the community on book club weekly events, special guest features, bonus content, open forum access, free resources and so much more. Join The Community - extended episodes & bonus features https://www.mattjacob.co/insiders The App That Transformed My Art & Mind https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965 Website: https://themoodpodcast.com Socials: IG | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube | @mattyj_ay

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Showing 1–20 of 32 episodes