2025 12 11
Visitor parking; spaces open! Chicago, Illinois. January, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Another update on the “China Situation,” as I will now refer to it. If unfamiliar, please see: 2025 11 07; 2025 11 24
The trend remains! An even higher percentage of this here blog’s traffic is now originating in China (or my mom’s infected computer). Up from a previous high of 70%, China now accounts for over 83% (!) of all visitors. At this pace, by the end of the year we suspect nine of every ten visitors to be Chinese (bots). By early next year, the figure might be at 100% or even 110%, assuming they’ve figured out how to mathematically make this possible.
My new theory is that the bots are infiltrating every detail of this blog in an effort to (finally) get me to sign up for a TikTok account. It won’t work.
Instead, I think once the 100% threshold is inevitably reached, I will sell all of my photography equipment and get that juicy $80k/year salary job pushing carts at Costco that I’ve been dreaming about. While the Costco parking lot is perhaps my most dreaded place on Earth, I welcome the new life challenge.
-Clayton 卡哇邦嘎
2025 12 10
Dave wearing the Shame Hat. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
As I’ve mentioned previously, I very much feel like I’m back in school these days with my work doing Realm Books. It has brought me a nonstop constant supply of images to digest and consume. While I think it’s important to maintain a healthy balance of creating vs consuming, both are important to the process. Through the years I’ve been guilty of leaning too heavily into one or the other — either spending all my time making work and thinking I know best or making no work and feeling like I’m incapable of doing so at the level of quality I strive for. These days I’m actively working on finding and maintaining the balance between creating and consuming.
Always a fan of Bryan’s videos, this one today is well worth a watch just to give you some sparks of inspiration. It definitely did for me, at least.
-Clayton
2025 12 09
Brian enjoys a wedding. Bloomington, Indiana. November, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
-Clayton
2025 12 07
A fresh start (after a horrific incident). Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
My life, lately, feels like this patch of earth. Previous structures I spent years building up have largely crumbled and been replaced with new concepts and ideas, which I am now building up from the cleared rubble of my previous endeavors. I was thinking on my walk to the studio this morning about how things are the hardest they’ve been in my entire adult life, yet I’m probably the happiest I’ve been in my entire adult life. This may sound strange, and I haven’t fully analyzed why this is the case (been too busy for that!), but in the coming weeks I hope to spend more time pondering and writing about this reality (been neglecting this here blog lately). My gut take is that I’m content when I’m working on challenging tasks that I enjoy, and less time stewing on things I can’t control (news, geopolitics, weather).
-Clayton
2025 12 06
Man fixes fence? Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
Ever since I started photographing things, I’ve been attracted to strange and absurd moments such as this one, spotted out my studio fire escape. Rather hilariously, this entire fence blew over in a storm about a week later. I bring up this image today not as a way to compare myself to him, but the sentiment behind his work, which was always one I was drawn to and considered one of my biggest early inspirations. Martin Parr passed away today, a sad day for the photography community as a whole.
While I don’t have anything profound to add to that conversation, I will instead use this as a moment to turn inward towards myself. Regrets in my career have been a lack of focus on these moments that drew me to put a camera in my hand in the first place; a lack of keeping up on names like Martin Parr who inspired me to make this hobby my career; a lack of continuing to make these wacky snapshots for many years while distracted making better money on commercial projects.
Anyway, onward and upward. Grateful to still be here doing this hobby-as-job for whatever time I have!
-Clayton
PS - here’s a nice chat with Martin on Ben Smith’s Small Voice podcast
2025 12 05
Boot for you, boot for me. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
This city will get its finances in order one way or another, eventually, maybe.
-Clayton
2025 12 04
Roo the Dog. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
Am I actually a dog person? Having only had cats my entire adult life, we finally have a dog in the house. It’s been a bit of a learning curve, for sure, but I like the added structure the lil guy brings to my life. Cats, on the other hand, play in to your wily tendencies and accentuate your outcast persona. With a dog, I feel like a proper member of society! Even while wiping shit off the ground. In fact, likely because of it.
-Clayton
2025 12 03
Attempting to hold back nature. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
Here’s a blurb I wrote for Cengiz Yar’s newsletter about my favorite photobook of the year:
While perhaps not as easily digestible as Daniel Arnold’s You Are What You Do (Loose Joints), my close runner-up for photobook of the year, Zed Nelson’s The Anthropocene Illusion (Guest Editions) is one of those projects that comes along and transcends the genre of mere photobook to become something far more significant. In our modern world of *gestures broadly*, this book does more to communicate where we’re at as a species than perhaps any work of art I’ve yet encountered. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, yet photography continues to be such an underrated form of art. This title shows what’s possible when you harness those unsaid words within its pages, filling it with such rich and complex meaning and narrative, while simultaneously being beautiful to look at. Because of this I can’t help but consider it my favorite of the year for what it’s able to communicate. Of course, not everyone will see it this way. That, too, explains how we’ve ended up where we are. *gestures broadly*
Favorite: Zed Nelson’s The Anthropocene Illusion (Guest Editions)
Runners-Up: Daniel Arnold’s You Are What You Do (Loose Joints), Jake Knapp’s Trump, Colorado (Constituent)
-Clayton
2025 12 02
Mouse. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
So what jobs are we all getting next?
My youtube obsession continues, with the video below hitting my feed as I was updating the bookshop inventory. I know almost nothing about tattoos, don’t have any myself, and likely never will. That said, I found this video wildly fascinating and informative. Realistically, there are many parallels to my own photography industry. The job market of the future continues to terrify me. Anyway, back to work.
-Clayton
2025 12 01
Keep Havin a Good Day! Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
Soooo close to being caught up on posts, yet still so far! This entire year has felt like I’m running on one of those moving walkways you find at the airport only I’m heading in the wrong direction. Doing far too many things so the gains all feel small and insignificant in the moment. Hopefully when I take a beat to relax and catch up on life, I’ll have a chance to take it all in and see and appreciate the gains. If not, I’ll have this picture hanging on my wall to keep me sane.
-Clayton
2025 11 30
Kid on break. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
I’ve become quite obsessed with my fake internet visitors from China. Over 76% (up from 73%) of This Here Blog’s traffic comes from Unknown, China. While it’s quite clear these are not real people and I must be on some ominous list, it’s remarkable how the dopamine hits to my brain are still pleased by the jump in “engagement.” Once the mysterious computers in a dark basement in Shanghai get redirected elsewhere, I’ll feel like this distraught kid on the floor, wondering where all my imaginary friends ran off to.
-Clayton
2025 11 29
Bugs gunna bug. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
Are You a Killer?
You have to kill. It’s a non-negotiable. Are you killing people or animals or ideas or dreams? In order to advance in this world, you have to be a killer. This is my biggest internal struggle. It’s a core belief, because it’s a fact. If you want to be or do anything, you need to kill. If you refuse to kill anything, you yourself will soon perish. Survival of the fittest they call it. But something I wonder, what’s the point of all the killing. Can’t we just be friends and lay in the prairie and enjoy the flowers? Even now, I’m killing the vibe.
-Clayton
2025 11 27
The 606 in winter. Chicago, Illinois. November, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
It used to be that I’d walk the 606 almost daily, as my studio and home are both located alongside of it. These days, however, I find myself taking a different path, through the neighborhood, mostly because it’s a slightly more direct and quicker route. The few minutes saved on each trip may add up over time and allow me to be more productive, but realistically the scenes and human encounters I am missing as a result are likely more detrimental. There’s a clever analogy in here somewhere but I’ll let you figure it out. I don’t have time for that today.
-Clayton
2025 11 26
Night shade. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
Almost caught up on posts! I vow to never fall so behind again! Will this here blog exist in 2026?
-Clayton
2025 11 25
That Tiny House. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
Here it is! My oldest known capture of That Tiny House on the Ricoh GRiiix. Perhaps it will be a book one day.
Follow the tag link to see more! One logistical issue I’m a little bummed about is that I start a new blog each year and I’m unable to carry tags over from previous years. Maybe one day I will find myself with far too much time on my hands and I will migrate everything over to a new platform. But realistically I doubt this day will come.
-Clayton
2025 11 24
New flag, who dis? Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
Previously, I wrote about how much of the traffic to this here blog has been coming from China (See: 2025 11 07). Well, that trend has only accelerated since that post and I’m now seeing over 70% of all traffic being of Chinese-origin. The only logical conclusions I can draw from this are:
I’m big in China!
My previous most frequent site visitor (my mom) has a computer so riddled with Chinese spyware and malware that her USA-based desktop computer is showing up as being Chinese.
My blog host (Squarespace) recently sold out to private equity and the new owners are boosting traffic to owners of websites with fragile egos (myself) in hopes to get us to stick around and pay them more money.
Whatever the actual reason for this situation, I will now translate each blog post into Mandarin Chinese (for my loyal readers who never comment and may not be human) in hopes to further increase my reach in my new favorite country:
之前我写过，这个博客的大部分流量都来自中国（参见：2025年11月7日）。自从那篇文章之后，这个趋势只增不减，现在我看到超过 70% 的访问量都来自中国。对此我只能得出以下几个合乎逻辑的结论：
我在中国很火！
我之前访问我网站最频繁的人（我妈），她的电脑大概已经被各种中国的间谍软件和恶意软件折腾得不成样子，以至于她在美国的台式机现在都被显示成来自中国的流量。
我的博客主机（Squarespace）最近卖给了私募基金，新老板为了让自尊心脆弱的网站主（比如我）继续留下并付更多钱，正在人为地提高我们的网站流量。
不管实际原因是什么，我现在决定把每篇博客文章都翻译成中文普通话（献给我那些从不留言、也许不一定是人类的忠实读者），以期在我如今最喜欢的国家进一步扩大影响力
-Clayton (拜拜)
2025 11 23
Allison. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
My wife (pictured) does not like this image. Clay (a published photographer) told me it’s his favorite image in my zine.
One of my big recent lessons has been that in practice, an image being good or bad has far less value than I’d previously placed upon it. More important to the work, I’m learning, is the context in which the specific image is placed. Is it alone on a print or in the middle of a book? Is it resting in a blog page with words below it or included in a web portfolio?
My first zine project (Pointing at Stuff 001, available now!) was very much a working lesson in world building and narrative forming. I won’t tell you I’m a master at thees things just yet, but I now feel like I’ve got at least one foot on the foundation and am excited to see where the next step takes me.
-Clayton
