2024 05 15

Charlie poses during one of my Keep it 100 sessions at the studio. December, 2023. Chicago, Illinois. © Clayton Hauck

Just a quick update today as I’m still buried in work with no time for bloggin’

I’m offering my Keep it 100 $100 portrait sessions at the studio this week. If you’re in town and need some new photos of yourself, book a session and come see me!

-Clayton

2024 05 07

Dinah in front of the camera for my Keep it 100 portrait session. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

Following my own advice from yesterday’s entry, I checked out another from Paulie B’s amazing Walkie Talkie series, this time featuring another photographer I was not previously familiar with by the name of Sara Messinger. I think the kids are alright! Beyond being introduced to another talented name, I loved the contrasting styles, approaches, and philosophies between Sara and Trevor, who was the previous subject of yesterday’s post. Throughout the entire forty-minute video, I’m not sure Sara made a single image, while Trevor finished like a dozen rolls and got into a few heated moments with strangers-who-became-subjects.

Partly why I loved this video with Sara is because she constantly reminded me of my own partner Allison, whereas I’m probably a bit more like Trevor. We all see the world a bit different and approach photography in our own ways. It’s also rather fascinating to contemplate how street photography has changed since I was their age wandering the streets with a camera. People these days are far more sensitive and aware about what might happen when a stranger makes a photo of them on the street without their consent.

That’s a deeper debate for another day, but let’s leave it there for now. Compete less; put yourself out there more; open yourself up to connect deeply with your subjects, as that’s how the magical moments are made. Thanks for your positive energy, Sara.

-Clayton

2024 04 24

Giant cross of Effingham, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

The term the writing is on the wall came to mind recently…

I’m a confirmed Catholic but haven’t been back to church since the day I was confirmed. While I’ve personally strayed from the church myself, I don’t necessarily have anything against organized religion. That said, religious organizations are made up of people so not immune to things like power struggles, greed, corruption, and extremism, which get publicized much easier in today’s modern world and push people like myself away.

When done well, religion can provide things which greatly benefit humans, namely: structure, meaning, faith, purpose, community. These are all great things, but again, in today’s modern world, there are plenty more options to provide these needs to people. Facebook, for example.

My partner and I recently met with a rabbi hoping he would be able to marry us later this year. It was my first time meeting the man but I was instantly won over by him and excited for the possibility of him being involved in our big day. That said, he won’t be marrying us because religious traditions and the positioning of the sun in relation to the earth would make us need to re-organize our entire wedding schedule to the point that it doesn’t make any sense (the sun sets at around 7:30pm on Saturday, our date, meaning the ceremony would need to get pushed back by about two hours later than we had planned). Again, not compatible with the modern world. It’s a shame, too, because as I get older I find myself more understanding of things like keeping the Sabbath, esp in this modern world full of unlimited distractions. Instead, we’ll need to find someone willing to accommodate our needs, opposed of shaping our wedding to fit within the structure of the church.

Before we left the temple, we stopped at the bathrooms where, on the other side of the hall was a long line of framed group photos taken on the annual confirmation day, representing decades of time. As I waited for Allison, I examined the pictures and was immediately struck by the clear decline in how many young people were taking part each year. Big full rooms of people in the 90’s eventually led to just a few kids last year. Immediately, I though of the rabbi we had just met with and how challenging this must be for him; the need to constantly adjust your long-held traditions and beliefs in order to accommodate a modern world, or not accommodate it and likely get left behind.

The writing is on the wall.

-Clayton

2024 04 22

A plate of fancy food photographed for Chicago Magazine at Atelier, Chicago. February, 2024.

Today I will wrap principal photography (haha) on a new cookbook due out later this year. The whole process was a big learning experience which maybe I’ll get into more detail about down the road. Despite the challenges, it kind of lit a fire under my butt to make more work that will be printed in book form; be it a cookbook, photobook, zine, whatever.

Time to buy myself a printer and print more of my photos. It’s been something I’ve severely neglected through the course of my career in photography.

-Clayton

2024 04 11

Totality is approaching, but will he capture it? Vincennes, Indiana on the state line with Illinois over the Wabash River. April 8, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

When living in the moment and anything to get the shot conflict, things can get complicated.

Having just returned from experiencing the first and possibly only total solar eclipse of my lifetime, I’m sitting on my couch consuming everyone’s eclipse content and finding myself regretting the whole living in the moment mantra I was doing my best to practice during my time spent directly in the path of totality down in Vincennes, Indiana. I am a photographer, afterall, so getting the shot is kind of my thing. Yes, I did still make dozens of photos and thoroughly enjoyed every moment during what is maybe nature’s most amazing show. However, suppressing my urge to strictly focus on capturing the moment in favor of being present in the moment and experiencing it through my own eyes (I even had a 200mm lens and tripod with me but left it in the car!) is something that is harder to justify the next day when you’re looking at everyone’s amazing eclipse captures and comparing them to the lackluster results you made only after the natural impulse to document took over midway through (because it was so amazing I felt like I just had to make some photos!). Instead of doing one or the other, I ended up attempting to do both, which doesn’t really work when you only have four minutes. Sure, I’ll always have the memories seared into my brain, but perhaps this is why people like myself are driven to create beautiful images in the first place — it’s a sort of visual evidence that these moments did in fact happen and you’re not simply fabricating them in your mind.

For me, yesterday was a vivid reminder that everyone experiences things from their own perspective and it’s best practice to live life in a way that best compliments your own viewpoints and impulses.

All that said, the moments that will stay with me forever are ones that can’t be captured on any camera because they require your internal vision and past experiences to fully appreciate: the friends and loved ones around you and their emotions being displayed; the roar of the crowd gathered in the park as totality took over and again as the sun emerged from behind the moon; the visible lights miles off in the distance that your brain knows you are only seeing because it’s now nighttime over there but isn’t, yet, where you are; the quality of light and the vibe that is surrounding you in 360-degrees as day turns to night and then back to day again, which one static image will just translate as a mostly ordinary sunset; the feeling of the scale of things, how you are both incomprehensibly small yet a part of something so grand and impossible to understand; when the skies turn dark and another planet is immediately and unexpectedly visible in the same sky you’d just been staring at for the past two hours, and then somebody mentions there is a comet that is also visible with the right optics in your same field of view—how layers upon layers of things exist and are only visible at the right time, with the right equipment, and the right tuning. Even in the void of space things are seemingly plentiful.

Almost as spectacular as the eclipse was the surreal feeling after it ended. Within an hour, even before the moon had finished transiting the sun, which by now was ordinary by comparison to totality, everyone had packed up a left town. The balloons were deflated, the band gone, the food carts moved off, the swarms of people and overflowing collection of cars nowhere to be seen. We stopped into a pizza spot to grab a bite to eat on the main street of this now mostly re-abandoned town and immediately encountered a woman angry about her reservation getting lost and having to wait for a table — the look on her face is one I will never forget when juxtaposed alongside the amazing life event I had just experienced. Was she not also there?! Did she not see what I’d just seen? How could you be so upset in this moment?

In our modern world of endless distractions and forms of entertainment, my thoughts turned to how this day might’ve be different a century ago when nobody had things to get back to so quickly. Maybe we’d hang out and talk to each other about what we’d just travelled to witness, instead of racing home to edit our content and put it out into the internet for a million strangers to hopefully notice. These physical places, town centers across the mostly forgotten Midwest, once the social medias of another time, are now mostly empty collections of run-down-yet-beautiful houses and more stray cats than human beings.

Driving home among a mass caravan heading back towards the big city, we talked about an acquaintance who avoids eclipses as part of her culture. Maybe it’s a long-forged human self-defense mechanism used to avoid the regret of not taking away from these magical moments any sort of wisdoms it deserves or great photographs to post on your social media for likes and follows. The pressure put upon a moment in time which you have absolutely no control over is quite dramatic. Sorry it rained on the day you had your only chance at experiencing God. Guess it wasn’t in the cards this lifetime. [update: last night I repeatedly dreamed that sunlight was now different that it was before the eclipse. It’s hard for the brain not to interpret such a colossal event as a sign that something far bigger and perhaps more dangerous has just taken place!]

In the end, I didn’t get the shot but I did get quite alright two-for-one buffalo wings, an experience I will never forget, and a nice reminder about how seeing the world from your perspective is all that we know, and making sure your perspective is a good one is the only thing we can kinda sorta control, if you put the effort into it.

One day we all look up at the same thing and everyone experiences it differently. 

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” - Anaïs Nin

-Clayton

PS - anyone want to go to Iceland or Egypt for the next few total solar eclipse viewings? I’ll bring the good lens this time!

2024 04 09

Chef Christian Hunter of Atelier photographed for Chicago Magazine (and used as the cover image!). Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

After roughly twenty years in the business, it’s rare I get to photograph a magazine cover (partly because magazines don’t really exist anymore) so it was an honor when my semi-regular client Chicago allowed me to do a cover shoot. My photography style tends to be a bit more gritty, dark, and authentic (agency buzz word alert!…are you listening, SEO?), which doesn’t always fit well in the glossy world of heavily-retouched magazine rack images. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

This image was made as part of a Best New Restaurants feature, which was a blast to be a part of and resulted in some great images.

While I’m still sort of feeling out what this particular website even is, I’m shying away from making it another commercial photography portfolio, so even sharing editorial images like this one doesn’t feel completely right. But we’ll see!

On the topic of myself, one other idea I had was to do a series on Instagram reels going into a bit more detail on how I made specific images. Tips, tricks, and observations. That sort of thing. Is this something people want or am I merely stroking my ego and hunting for social engagement? I don’t know! Sorting out how to exist within the current digital media landscape is endlessly confusing and largely frustrating. I guess at the end of the day you should just do things that feel right to you and not like a blatant grab for internet fame.

What do you think? Is anyone reading this? Blogging is the future so surely there will soon be tens of dozens of people interested in leaving their opinions in the comment section below.

-Clayton

2024 03 26

Chefs at Maman Zari prepare dishes for diners. Photo made as part of a Best New Restaurants spread for Chicago Magazine. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

One of my favorite podcasts is Joiners, in part because they chat with local Chicago hospitality personalities (many of which I personally know), but also because they do a great job of covering a diverse lineup of people from all different perspectives of the industry. Recently, this episode linked below stood out to me in large part due to the portion of the conversation where they discuss finances, insurance, taxes, government bureaucracy, and all these things most of us creative types cringe about but are also forced to deal with. Owner Jason Vincent of some favorite Chicago spots went deep into his frustrations revolving around operating at a higher price point in order to help cover expenses such as employee health insurance.

After listening, the following morning a newsletter by Allison Schrager hit my inbox which touched on the same themes and helped me connect the dots a bit more:

When we look at estimates of food prices moderating it does not tell us the whole story because eating out has become important to many people’s quality of life. In the last century, many once luxuries became common. Dining out used to only be a special occasion thing that now many households of all income levels do regularly. And that made lots of people happy. So did other services that became common in the last twenty years—like ride shares and fast-free delivery of everything (and seamless returns).

A tight labor market and rising minimum wages mean many services we’ve taken for granted are now a struggle, and that will mean people feel poorer because the things they enjoy cost much more.

Inflation is something we’re all sensitive to and is perhaps most easily noticed when dining out. Customers getting shitty about restaurants raising prices to pay for things like health insurance is understandable in part because, yes, some owners are doing it in bad faith, and because higher prices means less eating out so people are sensitive to it generally, but for the owners like Jason who are trying to do the right thing and create a working environment that is fair for his staff, it’s easy to see how this whole situation might be incredibly demoralizing for many restaurant operators. In out new fully globalized world, diners and consumers have been conditioned to seek out the lowest prices, regardless of how they get low, often without considering the tradeoff they are making in pursuit of that cheap mega meal. Rents are up, food prices are up, labor costs are up, (my hospitality photography prices are up), so it’s only logical that prices will need to increase significantly to cover all these new costs.

I have no grand takeaway from all this, but a better understanding of an industry I partially rely on to make a living. The food scene has exploded in recent years with new bars and restaurants opening seemingly every week. So many people now rely on restaurant work to make a living as these jobs are no longer fringe positions, rather a significant portion of the modern workforce with wages often reflecting a previous era. It will be interesting to see if this huge growth in a relatively-new industry can be maintained now that pricing realities are catching up to it or if people will go back to making more of their meals at home to help offset rising prices that don’t seem capable of going back down.

-Clayton

2024 03 18

Filmmaker & educator Anu Rana in my See You Soon studio as a subject in my Keep it 100 portrait setup. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

It’s Monday. Back to work…

Here’s a little self promotion. I do a really fun portrait setup in my studio where I offer $100 portrait sessions in which participants get 100 unique photos of themselves. No AI, no fancy Photoshop tricks, just a unique approach to good old fashioned portrait photography.

➡️ You can check out more about the process, or book a session next time I’m offering it, here on the studio page.

-Clayton

2024 03 16

Bladesmith Sam Goldborch in his studio in Skokie, Illinois. September, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

Late last year, I covered this assignment for Chicago Magazine where I spent three days with knife maker Sam Goldbroch in his studio outside of Chicago while he made a custom chef’s knife from scratch. It was a cool experience and I was really happy with the images I came away with, however, it left me thinking the still photos were a bit less effective than perhaps a well-made video would be in showing viewers the entire process from start to finish, having just experienced it myself in person.

Flash forward to now, after the Chicago piece ran, seeing an email from my uncle with a link to a really well done video featuring Anthony Bourdain in his visit to another bladesmith, Bob Kramer. That video can be viewed below and is worth a watch while also serving a sad reminder of how much I miss Anthony Bourdain.

-Clayton

➡️ Click here to see the Chicago Magazine piece
➡️ Click here to see more of my photos from the shoot

2024 03 02

An outtake from my “Keep it 100” portrait sessions. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

AI sources its “inspiration” from existing imagery. They grab millions, if not billions, of images and feed them into a massive neural computer network. Many, if not most, of the images are made by artists with no interest in training a computer model. Some of the images are illegal. Child pornography that got sucked into the system in the corporate drive to automate systems to train other systems on the biggest pool of imagery possible.

What interests me is what happens in 5-10 years when (if?) most content is AI generated. It will become a Digital Doom Loop of artificial reality. AI systems training themselves on artificial material made by other AI systems ad infinitum. Language will shift based on what the computers interpret to be language. If we can’t understand the computers, we’ll lose our grip on them, so we’ll be forced to bend to their automated will.

Anyway, have a nice weekend.

-Clayton

The video on the left was one of ~20 shared by OpenAI in its announcement of Sora, its text-to-video generator. It claims the video was, as this viral tweet notes, "generated by Sora."

The video on the left is from Shutterstock, with whom OpenAI has a partnership. https://t.co/QobhX01FJf pic.twitter.com/wp968R2WLy

— Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) February 16, 2024

2024 03 01

Wow, it’s been a lot of vertical images lately… Txa Txa Supper Club #30 at See You Soon Chicago. January, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Tyler Perry is a billionaire and massively successful filmmaker. This is why, when he recently announced he’s pausing plans to expand his Atlanta studio because of AI, people listened.

➡️ Tyler Perry Puts $800M Studio Expansion on Hold After Seeing OpenAI’s Sora: “Jobs Are Going to Be Lost”

I saw a wide range of responses to the headline online, from AI bros proclaiming movies will soon be fully automated, to others upset he’s not investing a billion dollars into a film studio as a way to combat the rise of AI. Regardless of what you think about the headline, my guess is that the reality of his decision to halt work after surely spending millions of dollars on the project was made more for exesting economic reasons than because Sora released a few automated videos that look like a high end video game render. These AI videos, released only by the company that is producing the renders (and surely only gives us the best of the best), do look quite remarkable at a glance, on a phone, in low resolution — and yes, it clearly shows where things are heading — but I also don’t think we’re going to fully automate away our arts and entertainment despite it sort of feeling like this is where we are heading.

Currently, the AI stories making the headlines are how good it is at making photos, videos, writing stories, graphic design, etc … all the fun and creative things humans enjoy doing. What’s less exciting to read about is how AI can replace the less glamorous professions such as tax preparation, legal copyrighting, software coding, logistics.

There’s no doubt in my mind that AI is coming for all of us and will massively transform the world in the coming decade (if not this year). Just look at the NVIDIA stock price and you’ll see this is what the stock market believes. I think the AI revolution (a new Industrial Revolution) is already transforming corporate America in less obvious ways: namely employee headcount. Corporations are letting go and/or pausing hiring as they figure out all the ways to best implement AI into their corporate structure while replacing as many humans possible. The economy still feels relatively okay, but a storm is a brewin’. These changes aren’t yet mainstream news stories but I think soon everyone will start to feel the effects of someone they know losing a job because it is, at least attempting to be, outsourced to artificial intelligence.

Scott Galloway put out a nice piece (linked below) equating the corporate use of AI to the human use of diet drugs. We all do it, we just don’t like to talk about it.

➡️ Corporate Ozempic

I just wish I could automate a way to not think about AI so damn much these days.

-Clayton

PS - want to dig into this even further and get even more depressed? This video is worth your time and paints a largely bleak picture about our not-too-distant futures

PPS - My CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer!

2024 01 23

The Florida Tropical House. Beverly Shores, Indiana. February, 2022. © Clayton Hauck

Back in early 2022 I worked on a really fun piece for the Wall Street Journal which sent me down to Beverly Shores, Indiana to photograph some of the wild houses they have that were originally built for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. The Florida Tropical House, pictured here, is now on the market and available to rent for $2.5million (it’s on National Park property so residents to these unique houses can only lease, not own them).

More images from my WSJ assignment here 📸

Zillow listing for The Florida House here

Link to WSJ piece here (paywalled)

-Clayton