The MOOD Podcast

By 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

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The podcast currently has 160 episodes available.

Best of The MOOD Podcast

The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

Number 1: 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 chestWhy you're the one person who can't see your own work coldRepeated "wrong" readings as a pattern, not noiseWhat happens if both gaps close completely, and whether a perfect photograph would be worth looking atExplaining an image versus articulating a body of work, and why timing is the differenceMessage 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
August 20, 202615min
Number 2: 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 girlBeing the only woman in her classWhy the letter X sits at the centre of her book, and why the title ends in an exclamation markThe 170 English words for the act of seeingThe folly of memory, wrong captions, and choosing to remember the fictionHer image-based retelling of Susan Sontag's On PhotographyWhy she thinks moving forward is not always the right next stepWhat she sees in students of every age that worries her mostFind 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
July 30, 20261h 39min
Number 3: 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
July 23, 202617min
Number 4: 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 emptyTim Carpenter's confession about being subject matter driven early in his careerRobert Adams on form as an answer to the fear that life is chaosWhy the most moving photographs hold together barely, not perfectlyHow your body decides the photograph before you doMindfulness and attention as trainable photographic skillsA 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
July 09, 202623min
Number 5: Finding Contentment, Craft, And Community In Photography - Answering Your Questions! Moments of Mood, 3.2
What if your best work starts with a quiet cup and a clear mind? We kick off the year with an honest, unscripted 'Ask Me Anything' episode that explores how small rituals, sharper definitions, and a steadier inner compass can change both your art and your days. From an early morning espresso and two loyal dogs to the decision to ignore empty metrics, I trace a path from presence to better pictures, and hopefully a calmer life behind the lens. I talk about instinct, happiness, success, and the quieter realities of building a life around photography. We also move through what it actually takes to get better without burning out, why alignment matters more than attention, and the long game of creating work and communities that genuinely care. I hope it helps, and thanks for all of you who sent in questions. 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
January 21, 20261h 8min