The MOOD Podcast

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.

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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.

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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/
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_________________________________
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

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https://wakingup.sjv.io/c/7738181/3958771/54965

Website:
https://themoodpodcast.com

Socials:
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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

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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:
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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
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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

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

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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:
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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/

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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:
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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

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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:
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Matt talks with psychologist Zahra Ciardi, founder of Ascendant Bali, to explore the inner life of the creative person: why so many photographers feel their work isn't truly theirs, the limiting beliefs that keep artists stuck, and how to put your work into the world without being ruled by validation.

By the end of this episode you'll understand why your photography stops feeling like yours, and what it takes to create from your true self instead of your need to be seen.

Zahra works in trauma recovery and peak performance, and she breaks down the psychology of high achievers, the anatomy of avoidance, the inner critic, and how childhood shapes the way we create as adults.

Other things discussed:

• The "bus" model of the self and why the inner critic ends up driving
• Highly sensitive people and why creatives feel everything so intensely
• Over-diagnosis, self-diagnosis, and the bigger problem of under-treatment
• Self-neutrality as the realistic first step before self-love
• Graded exposure for photographers afraid to share their work
• Using social media intentionally instead of being used by it
• Whether healing costs you your creative edge
• How childhood memory is stored in the body, not just the mind
• The single values exercise Zahra says works every time

Zahra's links:
www.ascendantbali.com
www.zahraciardi.com
https://www.instagram.com/zahra_ciardi/

____________________

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:
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Cristina Mittermeier is a National Geographic photographer, co-founder of SeaLegacy, and author of "Hope." Her work has been featured in National Geographic's series "Photographer" and in publications around the world. Cristinais the photographer who coined the term "conservation photography," co-founded SeaLegacy, and made the starving polar bear image seen by an estimated 2.5 billion people. 

In this episode Matt and Cristina discuss how to find your photographic voice that actually means something, why a point of view separates an artist from a craftsman, and the one principle Cristina has built her life around: to show up.

- Join the Mood Insiders for ad-free extended episodes, monthly masterclasses, the weekly book club, and much more (link in notes below) - 

Other things you will take away from this episode:

• The "glorious amateur" and why expertise is not a prerequisite for meaningful photography
• The full story behind the starving polar bear photograph and the backlash that followed
• How the social media algorithm punishes beautiful and important photography
• The idea of the photographer as a "membrane" rather than a messenger
• Why storytelling now matters more than the photograph itself
• "Enoughness" as a personal answer to consumerism
• Building a real portfolio of physical work instead of living on Instagram
• A personal handbook of ethics for photographers
• Why AI will make human-made photography more valuable, not less
• Legacy, ego, and shedding the need to be exceptional
• SeaLegacy and the next decade of conservation photography
• Practical advice for emerging photographers starting out today

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Cristina’s platforms:
Website - https://www.cristinamittermeier.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mitty/
SeaLegacy - https://www.sealegacy.org/

____

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:
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In this episode, Matt sits down with Rich-Joseph Facun, a celebrated American documentary photographer, former photojournalist of 15 years, and founder of the independent publishing imprint Liars Corner. 

In this conversation we discuss his three monographs: Black Diamonds, Little Cities, and 1804, the ethics of street and portrait photography, photographing strangers in Trump-era Appalachia, walking away from photojournalism, finding your photographic voice, and why the global photo book industry urgently needs more marginalised and Indigenous voices.

Other things we discussed:

• Street portraiture, approaching strangers, and consent in documentary photography
• Growing up in a Southern Baptist military family and door-to-door evangelism as training for portrait work
• Photographing Trump-supporting Appalachia as a person of colour with a trans child
• The viral portrait of a stranger with a damaged forehead tattoo crying on the street
• Quitting photojournalism after 15 years and the identity crisis that followed
• Why he stopped using Rembrandt lighting and the decisive moment in his portrait work
• How to find your photographic voice after mastering the craft
• Self-publishing a photo book vs pitching to independent publishers
• The making of Black Diamonds, Little Cities, and 1804
• Launching Liars Corner as an Indigenous-owned photo book imprint in Appalachia
• Elitism, gatekeeping, and barriers to entry inside the global photo book publishing industry
• Mentoring emerging documentary photographers and funding their first monographs
• Why awards, accolades, and staff photographer positions stopped mattering

Rich-Joseph Facun
Instagram: https://instagram.com/facun
Website: https://facun.com
Imprint: https://liarscorner.press

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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