The MOOD Podcast
In The MOOD Podcast, Matt Jacob, renowned cultural portrait photographer, dives deep into the world of photography and the visual arts, with guests from all around the creative industry, across all parts of the globe, sharing inspiring stories and experiences that will leave you wanting more. With years of experience and a passion for storytelling, Matt has become a master of capturing lesser-told human stories through his photography, and teams up with other special artists from around the world to showcase insights, experiences and opinions within the diverse and sometimes controversial photography world.
You can watch these podcasts on his Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mattyj_ay.
You can also follow Matt's work on his Instagram @mattyj_ay and his website: https://mattjacobphotography.com.
The MOOD Podcast
The number one reason you can't find your voice as an artist, and how I found mine - Moments of Mood, 2.5
In this special episode of Moments of Mood, I’m sharing my keynote speech from the Global Possibilities Summit, where I spoke on a topic close to my heart: How to Find Your Voice as an Artist.
This is the story of how cancer, depression, and a camera led me to rediscover myself — and how intentionality, presence, and rebellion can turn your art into something truly meaningful.
Whether you’re a photographer, creative entrepreneur, or simply someone searching for purpose, this story will resonate with you.
Let me know your thoughts, and how you might be reclaiming your authentic story, and voice!
Thank you for listening.
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Thank you for listening and for being a part of this incredible community. You can also watch this episode on my YouTube channel (link below) where I also share insights, photography tips and behind-the-scenes content on my channel as well as my social media, so make sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Threads and TikTok or check out my website for my complete portfolio of work.
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Welcome to the Mood Podcast, uncovering the art of conversation through the lens of photography and creativity, one frame at a time. I'm your host, matt Jacob, and today's episode is something a little different. This week, I'm sharing the recording of a keynote speech I recently delivered at the Global Possibilities Summit, an event that brings together visionaries, creators and changemakers from all around the world.
Speaker 1:I had the honor of speaking on a topic that's been at the heart of everything I do how to find your voice as an artist and in this talk, I explore the journey from anxiety and suppression to creative expression and identity. I unpack what it really means to create from a place of inner knowing, how to turn rebellion into purpose and why the search for meaning is inseparable from the act of making, whether through photography, business or simply how we show up in the world. This is about reclaiming authorship of your story. So I hope you can find some type of inspiration, knowledge or insights from this talk, and if it can help in any way at all, I'd be extremely honoured and grateful, as always. Thank you so much for listening and happy shooting Put your hand up if you have a phone.
Speaker 1:Keep your hand up if you enjoy taking photos on that phone. Keep your hand up if you have a love-hate relationship with your phone. Me too. Me too. The doctor looked up from the test results you have cancer. I was 20 at the time and this wave of fear and worry just washed all over my body. But I told myself I was okay.
Speaker 1:My whole life I'd been suffering from anxiety. I think much of that anxiety came from really wanting to please a person I cared very deeply about my dad. He was in the Navy and so naturally I thought I had to go into the Navy as well. And at 16, I applied way too immature and too anxious to get in and deep down. I think I felt relieved. I didn't have to follow in my father's footsteps. But that anxiety I had had a name. It was called Moody Matt. Yeah, this was a label given to me by my family repeatedly over many years. I know you get the violins out right.
Speaker 1:A few years after the Navy rejection, I received news that my parents were getting divorced, and it was a really messy one. And this was just as I was finishing school and about to go traveling and working for a year before university. But throughout those teenage years, something I think had been really brewing underneath from all of that repression, a part of me that wanted to rebel, that repression, a part of me that wanted to rebel. So when the cancer diagnosis came in, around a year or so later, I kind of reverted to type Don't show any emotion, don't reinforce the label of moody Matt. And in that moment of chaos the inner rebel came out more than ever. The cancer diagnosis actually took that rebellious energy that had been fighting all of these systems around me for many years and turned it into something useful, a productive rebellion. I took that energy and focused it on the one thing that felt authentic to me, something more deep and more personal than just joining the Navy I wanted to fly. I wanted to be a pilot. I'd like to invite you into the possibility that creating from your inner, knowing from who you truly are, not what the world expects, is the only real path to understanding who you are and finding true fulfillment and equanimity in life, because the meaning you create for your life is also the meaning you pour into your work, into your family, into your business, into the way you lead others, to the way you love, into the way you show up in the world. My passion, my art, is photography. But when I say art, the variety of ways that each of us are creating art in our own lives, every single day, through your business, through your family, through your job, through your purpose, through your voice, through your ideas, through your craft, my invitation to you is this who is it that you are creating your art for? Because when it's not for approval and it's not for applause, that's when it begins to feel like truth.
Speaker 1:So in my 20s, after much ambition and dreaming, I became that pilot. Many years of struggle, I'd finally made it, and I remember the feeling. It was just pure elation, very quickly evaporated into just relief. I'd proven it. Proven it to the world, to my parents, to myself. Because while I loved flying, it just put me in another system, a system that dictated where I had to be, when I had to work, who I had to work with, when I could take time off, how much I got paid, etc. Etc. Etc.
Speaker 1:So I was always looking for something else. I wanted something more. But this was the industry I knew, it was the only one I knew. But I wanted more freedom, more status, to cover up this feeling of confinement and this cognitive dissonance between who I really was underneath and who I was pretending to be. So I turned my attention to the Ferraris of the sky, the private jets, the suit, the swagger, the salary. I could travel the world, look important, feel important and tell myself this is it, and it was. For a while it was exciting. I've created a life that looked impressive from the outside, but inside I still felt very stuck back in childhood, still being told what to do, where to go, who to be, still performing. Eventually I realized something None of this was fulfilling, none of this was purposeful. It was all for status, it was a cover-up story, a story that I would tell myself to hide who I really was and what I wanted to be. Until this repression and suppression really took its toll on me, and until I did the only thing I knew what to do.
Speaker 1:Next, I rebelled productively, and that's when I picked up a camera. At first it was just to take photos of where I was going to post, to prove, to validate, to be seen, and, just like flying, I used this productive rebellion to really learn photography, to be the best at it. I learned all the gear, all the settings, light, editing, all of it. But when I showed my photos to people, it was generally met with ambivalence and empty platitudes oh, yeah, yeah, no, that's really nice, but I was so sure I was really good at this. So why wasn't I getting this validation and attention that I clearly craved? After years of investment of time and money, I realized I wasn't capturing any meaning. I was just capturing pictures, two-dimensional pictures, with the sole purpose to impress.
Speaker 1:And then something changed. A friend of mine in Hong Kong, where we were living at the time, invited me to a photography workshop in Mongolia. I said yes. Obviously, cancer made me this serious serial. Yes, man, and so I went. I joined eight other people as we traveled to outer Mongolia, where we'd spend our days sleeping under the stars, camping, photographing eagle hunters, surrounded all this time by stillness, culture and space and cold. It was absolutely freezing. For the first time I actually started to see, because there were two professional photographers on that workshop who gave me some of the smallest but most insightful and impactful pieces of advice that still stay with me today about presence, about light, about how to be with people Without ever saying the word and without ever really, I think, knowing what they were introducing me to. They were showing me mindfulness and something shifted. I began to ask myself completely different questions. What do I truly want to capture? What do I find meaningful? What do I find beautiful? Where do I belong? And that's when I realized up at all of this time I was just creating for others, to impress, to validate, to be seen. And this workshop gave me something else. It gave me a bit of a window into myself, a new way of seeing, of slowing down, of being intentional. It reconnected me to something I didn't even know I had lost. And here's what I learned Intention and mindfulness make you a better artist.
Speaker 1:Don't worry, this isn't too woo-woo. I'm a rationalist at heart. It's how I make sense of the world. But I wanted to take this term and apply it rationally to everyday life. I spent a lot of time understanding how mindfulness and clear intention can help me, not just in photography, but in everyday life, moment to moment. Practice to practice. After all, if we're chasing happiness, when does it not become an endless pursuit and when can we just be happy? But that's for another day. So I focus this investigation and rationalization into mindfulness on what I love photography into mindfulness, on what I loved photography. But of course, this isn't just about just using a camera. It's about everything. It permeates every facet of life and every pursuit within it.
Speaker 1:Mindfulness and intention make you a better artist, not just with a camera, with your time, with your energy, with your relationships, with your life, your story. So when I started bringing mindfulness into my photography, I did start to slow down. I'd no longer race to get the shot because it was a banger I could put on Instagram. I'd sit, I'd listen, I'd get to know the people. I'd wait for that perfect moment, not try and force it, and I became clearer on what I was actually trying to express. It gave me vision, not of light and composition, gave me vision of purpose, but most importantly, it made me more empathetic. I wasn't just photographing a person anymore, I was co-creating an experience with them and slowly but surely, over years, my photos started to become alive, a little bit more emotionally resonant, and this is what I believe now.
Speaker 1:Being a better artist isn't about knowing more. It's about being more present, more intentional, more you. Through becoming a better artist, I became a better man, a better partner, a better son, a better human. So what's possible for you.
Speaker 1:When you begin creating from this inner place of knowing For maybe your business, maybe your family, maybe your job, your craft, your story you begin to express a version of yourself that isn't there to prove anything, but it's a version of yourself that's the truth. You stop asking what will people think and you start asking what feels true to me. You stop trying to be impressive, you start being more intentional, and it doesn't matter what your art looks like, because, whatever it is, when you create from alignment, not for likes, approval and validation, you experience a fulfillment that no amount of material success can manufacture. You stop reacting and you start choosing. You stop performing and you start creating. But most of all, you become more grounded, more clear, more whole. So how do you start? Well, you don't need the next thing, you don't need the next course, you don't need more equipment, you don't need more time. You just need a moment of honesty and a willingness to listen to what's already inside of you. I say this a lot to the people in my mentorship program, especially when they're starting out with a camera. I get them to imagine a thought experiment where we're in a vacuum. There's no external validation pressures, there's no commercial pressures, there's no bills to pay, there's no children to raise. We can do what we want.
Speaker 1:If you want to do photography and you picked up a camera, what would you go and shoot? Now, of course, this is analogous to anything in life. What would you capture, what would you create, what would you say? What would you do? How would you behave? Just because it feels true to you.
Speaker 1:So, whatever it is, pour yourself into the things that are most beautiful, meaningful and natural to you, because that's the part of you that's been waiting to be expressed. So my wish for you and for the world is this you stop creating to be seen and you start creating to be felt. You begin to live and work from what's real within you, not from what the world expects, but from what you find beautiful, whether you express yourself through a camera, a conversation, a networking event, a company or just a quiet moment. May you return to the things that move you, that ground you and that come most naturally to you, because meaning doesn't arrive from the outside. It's made moment by moment, by how you show up in the world. So my wish for you is this that, through the story I've shared, you can begin to see the possibility of focusing your lens on what you find most beautiful, meaningful and natural, Because that that is where you truly become the artist you were meant to be. Thank you.
Speaker 2:All right, let's get up for Matt one more time, thank you. So, matt being our keynote speaker, we have a little bit of extra time with him to go into some questions. I have some prepared. If you have a burning question, I will turn it to the audience in a moment. So, first and foremost, thank you, brother, for that. Thanks for having me. And what I noticed was this layer of a moody Matt growing up. Yeah, and now you have this very successful podcast called the Mood. What's the relation?
Speaker 1:When I started out, my photography style was always described as moody, very dramatic. How do you feel I was? Yeah, I was like, yeah, I liked, I was drawn to the drama of a still image. I wanted to make it as dramatic and as moody as possible, and so it just felt natural that the mood podcast was, you know, a good name, and so I I tailor a lot of the conversations about this, about mindfulness, mindset. Not about technique, gear, tips and tricks, just about what mood. What mood are you in today? What mood do you shoot with? How mindful of you of that are you?
Speaker 2:I love this, yeah, yeah and and I've seen some of your photographs and they're just like it. It's like this empty space is just being held within them. Somehow, you know, you do, you do capture this mood. Um, you also do photography, mentorship, yeah, yeah, tell me, what does this look like?
Speaker 1:well, everyone's different, right. Every photographer in this world budding photographer is different. Um, I created a mentorship purely based around the fact that when I was learning there wasn't YouTube. I couldn't find a mentor that I could really grab onto. That I got on well with. It was all very transactional. It was five, you know, one hour calls for this much. I wanted someone to hold my hand, really wanted someone to grow with me, to teach me everything. I wanted that instance of a photography workshop for the for life right, those those little like light bulb moments.
Speaker 1:You know, what did you do when you were, you know, having this problem? Because you know, just like everything else in life, there's always hurdles. There's always I can't get this, I don't know why I can't take photos like this, or how to make or get clients or how to make a business out of it. So I it was really born from what I knew. I didn't know if that makes any sense, and so I just wanted to give back in that way, in a way, to any photographers in the room. I think we've got a couple. It's difficult to make money as a photographer to work for other clients, not only sacrificing your creative freedom. They generally don't pay that well anymore unless you're like top of the game. So there was that. I wanted to somehow monetize you know, my skillset, but it was really born out of scarcity. I still don't see any other mentors that have a very close long-term relationship with their clients, I guess. And so, yeah, I wanted to build something. You want to build that Mongolia moment?
Speaker 2:Absolutely absolutely, yeah, yeah I wanted someone to hug me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, did you hug me through the journey? Absolutely the classic version of a mentorship. But it's not really there in in photography and filmmaking world, not that I know of yeah or that I saw and and do you do you also?
Speaker 2:does that translate to other creative passions as well? Is your mentorship silly for photography, or does it expand to say painting or dancing or any other creative form?
Speaker 1:I wouldn't like to say that I'm qualified to kind of be a mentor in that space. I think more of a consultant maybe, certainly when it comes to putting portfolios together. Branding, which is is you know, ironically, a lot of artists in this world are just really bad at branding in self-branding, um, and the business side of it that you know most of the questions I get and you know inquiries all about. You know I want to start making money from this um, so in that respect, yes, but really my mentorship is about about photographers. Photography, yeah beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all I have a burning question that I want to know. So you've been a pilot for over a decade, two Over two decades, two decades, wow, okay, so over two decades. What does it feel like to go onto a plane that you're not flying? Is that weird? Which class am I in? Are you like I and the pilots and you know, like looking for some badge or something Like what goes through your head, or are you just like whatever Look?
Speaker 1:if I'm in economy, my wife here, she knows how I suffer that just being long legged, and you know, if it's more than a few hours, I struggle, you know, in terms of comfort level. And then that plays into my mind. You know, I don't have any sleep, I'm not comfortable, and then I start noticing things about the flight. Right, what are these guys doing up there? Right? Um? So, yeah, look, I know, I know that world so well. I'm very, very, very comfortable. However, you know there are some airlines that I avoid. Yeah, um, just because I know what goes. Yeah, okay, so you can find out right away.
Speaker 2:It's got to pay me a bit of money. Yeah, we're not going to announce it here. Question for the audience yes, do you have a picture that makes your heartbeat 55,000 miles an hour? Yeah, will you show us?
Speaker 1:Let's see so the reason I got this, because this was shortly after that workshop and a lot of things clicked for me then. But this, yeah, didn't even know I did that, it clicked, it exposed a lot of yeah, it really developed. Yeah, okay, we can go on, oh man, Completely unscripted guy yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, Just trying to think of some more. No, no, yeah yeah, yeah me, you in the dark.
Speaker 1:Yes, there we go. This is not my best photo ever in any stretch of the imagination, but it was the one moment I was on my own and not on a workshop with teachers or or client. You know, I was just literally on my own in the, on a workshop with teachers or clients. You know, it was just literally on my own in the middle of Uganda, just trying to figure out this craft. Just, you know, it's obviously one of the best ways to just go and do it, try it yourself until you fail, fail, fail and then find something that clicks. And this was a moment.
Speaker 1:You know, I went back to visit her a few years later, but it was because I felt such a strong connection with her and it was all from me, but it was a, you know, a young girl of eight years old who had absolutely nothing in life, you know, and I'm this big white guy coming in with this expensive equipment. It just felt complete. You know, there's a lot of ethical boundaries there and ethical responsibilities that I talk also a lot about with photography. And what am I doing? Coming into their space and just shoving camera in the face, and so there's kind of a lot of narrative behind it, just self-talk.
Speaker 1:You know, where do I want to belong? What do I? What do I find meaningful here? Am I just one of these tourist photographers that come in snap, take and, and I didn't want to ever do that? So there was a part of that behind this image. But just the experience itself, you know, the connection with her I had there was indescribable really. And yeah, technically a lot of things came together, but also emotionally, this is what I want to do with my life.
Speaker 2:So yeah, beautiful, we'll do one last one from the audience. Cancer stage what's going on?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I used it in my story because it really did shift a mindset for me at an early age and I was very emotionally unintelligent at the time. I didn't really know what was going on, so I had no idea how to process a cancer diagnosis. It was testicular, so it was. You know I want to downplay it, but it was very curable. I didn't know that at the time, obviously, but in retrospect I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea what was going on A few years later. Absolutely fine, you know, in remissionission, no problem. But looking back on it, I learned a lot more lessons 10 years later looking back on it than I did at the time and that's why, you know, at the time I rebelled. It was just like say yes to anything, fuck everything else. So it did change me initially, I think for the worst, but now I can garner so many lessons from that and that's, you know, it really was an important part of my life, beautiful.
