2024 04 29

A car rest wrapped in the drive awaiting nicer weather. Peru, Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

This website has become a filter of sorts. After making images, they get edited down to my selects, which then get color and tone adjusted and saved into another folder. Then, those selects get edited down again and moved into another folder meant to go towards various social media or websites, including this one. When I go to make a new blog entry, I browse the Pointing at Stuff website folder and see which images are still feeling good enough to post or are no longer feeling as excited and get scrapped.

This image, while a simple moment without much action, is one that I feel good about. It’s a bit of a new perspective for me, taking images of simple moments like this that I come across while out and about. This is not to say I haven’t previously made photos but that my eye is now hunting for “art photos” that may fit into a bigger body of work. Once you combine images and juxtapose different frames, new meanings and vibes get formed which can then be further explored and created upon.

Anyway, none of this may make sense and you may dislike this image, but I’m enjoying my new found perspective on photography and plan to continue pursuing it to see where it takes me.

-Clayton

2024 04 26

Car parked at night. Chicago, Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Sometimes when The Office is on, you get sucked into an Office Hole and forget to finish all the work and blog posts and life stuff that you needed to do. But also sometimes it’s nice to just check out and let your brain decompress for a few hours.

-Clayton

2024 04 17

How’s my driving? Not great! Chicago, Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Arriving late to my airport-adjacent hotel on a quick work trip, I glance at my phone to see if any food options are still available. Everything closes soon. Luckily, there’s a decently-rated basic grill in the hotel next to mine so I drop my stuff and walk towards it. The parking lots are massive and dark. The hotel looms over the dark horizon but as I get closer it becomes apparent that the entire perimeter of the hotel property I am currently on is fenced in with no pedestrian access. I’m in one of these areas designed fully for car access only.

Instead of giving up and backtracking to go all the way around the complex, I mumble “fuck cars” to myself while scanning the area for any sort of evidence of human foot-based activity. One area back near the dumpsters in the corner is a bit more worn out that the rest with a small gap in between the mature evergreen trees, so I psych myself up to make it happen. As I’m cresting the jagged steel fence, I have a quick vision of catching my foot and falling headfirst into the parking lot cement and needing to come up with some kind of cover story when I meet with the client the following morning because there is no possible way to make this sound not insane should it go wrong.

Luckily, I make it across with only a small cut on my hand, evidence to show the server if the situation calls for a little desperate pleading to get the kitchen to stay open for one last order. Now that the right building is immediately in front of me, the next problem becomes apparent. While, yes, the grill I’m seeking is right on the other side of the wall, I’m now standing in the back lot of the next hotel complex with, again, zero pedestrian access aside from a few emergency only escape doors which I can’t enter. I have a some more thoughts about how much I hate cities designed fully to accomodate cars as I walk all the way around the building and inside, my journey now complete.

They’re still serving, although the menu is limited to four items. I order the house burger and think about how old we are getting as I watch Lebron James’ Lakers win a play in game and a consistent stream of people wander in looking for food themselves, most holding airline vouchers that seem to be as valuable as cash in these parts.

Now, I’m back on my hotel bed reviewing casting callbacks while typing out this monotonous story-of-my-night without any sort of lesson, purpose, or deeper meaning. Let’s land the plane, Clayton!

When airplanes aren’t falling apart mid-flight, modern air travel is a remarkable human achievement. Merely a few hours ago, I was back home in Chicago meeting with a rabbi about our upcoming wedding ceremony and now I’m hopping a fence in search of a cheeseburger in a city 700 miles away, while the most interesting thing in my afternoon wasn’t browsing the internet 35,000 feet in the sky, or riding the automated airport train, or moving through mid air at 580 miles per hour.

The most interesting thing was, upon leaving to walk back to my hotel, again getting stuck in this new hotel’s parking lot only to run into a security guard who told me the only way to exit on foot is in the exact opposite direction I needed to go. Fucking cars! Seeing my frustration, he asked where I was headed, to which I pointed up at the building right across the alley from where we were. He told me to go back into the hotel, cut down a hallway, and go through the doors marked Employees Only, then out the back exit. I’m not usually one to disobey the honor system no access warnings but given permission by the parking lot security guard, this was my ticket to adventure! Thanks Sonesta Atlanta Airport North for a solid burger, back-stage access, and a shortcut which saved me 6 minutes of walking which I could then sink into writing this remarkable retelling.

-Clayton

2024 03 19

Damaged car situation somewhere in Chicago. September, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

It used to be things were messy. These days, everything is clean, sleek and easy! Of course, this isn’t the case, we’ve just become better at hiding the messy bits behind a fascade.

The Disneyfication of America, if you will. Apple is a shining example. PCs used to be complicated until Apple made it easy. All the system files and folders are hidden behind a digital curtain which you can only peek behind if you know the secret access door. We don’t trust you with those files. It’s plug and play! Granted, this approach makes a lot of sense and has been wildly successful. It is the better way—until it’s not. Until your system has crashed and you now don’t know a thing about it and are therefore reliant on the Genius Bar to come to your rescue and free your important business documents from digital purgatory.

Today, I walked to work after being unable to charge my electric vehicle for reasons unknown. File a service request and move on. It’s a fun car, though! Not a button in sight!

Arriving at work, I go to turn on some music but my fancy wireless speakers don’t work because the Sonos app can’t update and is stuck in a doom loop of saying it needs to update, followed by a failed update with no further information. File a service request and head to the daily photo blog to vent about it.

In a way, it’s a nice reminder that while things may appear orderly and structured, there’s still a mess behind the scenes.

Don’t becomes fully dependent on the Genius Bar. Stay messy.

-Clayton

2024 03 09

Car under wraps in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Uh oh — I’m out of buffer! The wrap on my brain is being revealed to show I’ve run out of ideas only a few month’s into this project!

Well, not really, but finding the time to do a daily post is proving to be more time consuming than I’d anticipated. I’m aiming to avoid simply plopping down an image with a meaningless sentence, but creating posts with deeper meaning is time consuming. If only we had a way to automate this process! (Kidding. That’s what AI is and yes I’m still obsessing over it and how it is coming for all of our jobs).

Enjoy the weekend. I’m off to think up more thoughts (have plenty of pictures).

-Clayton

2024 01 27

Steubenville, Ohio. November, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

Be the Mysterious Artist.

I am not the mysterious artist. I am the oversharing, throw it all against the wall and see what sticks, just happy to be here artist. I’m not sure I’ll ever be the mysterious artist but I do see the appeal. Anyway, enjoy the daily photo!

-Clayton

PS in college I worked at a local video store and, as the youngest employee at the store (that was 85% porn), I was always intimidated by what the other employees liked or listened to. Don’t get me wrong, my Employee Picks section was pretty fire, but in terms of music I’d typically let the others lead the way. One guy would listen to Tom Waits a lot and this track always stuck out to me as being so moody and cool.

2024 01 18

Car in front of house just outside Chicago, Illinois. November, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

Important Announcement: For the second annual year, our Personal Anthem is…

Stay Positive by The Hold Steady

In anticipation of *gestures broadly,* we feel the need to maintain our continual reminder that we, indeed, gotta stay positive. We’re getting older but have some things to be proud of. The kids are doing things differently but let’s be real, deep down they appreciate our contributions in years past and we can learn from how they are doing things differently. We acknowledge that sometimes we run short on options and go with the quick fix — we’re only human, after all.

To be candid: 2023 was the most challenging year of my professional career. Early on, I assigned myself this song to help see me through; a constant reminder that things ebb & flow and sustained success isn’t always a realistic outcome in life and esp. not in the world of commercial photography. In years past, I kept my overhead low and weathered the downtime by simply not paying any attention to it! Reading, travel, movies, etc all became my go-to time fillers and distractions. What changed is that last year my overhead ballooned dramatically as I had studio rent to pay each & every month no matter how few assignments were coming in. This directly led to me associating things like casual magazine reading, a healthy and important aspect of my life in years prior, as a harmful & lazy distraction in a never-ending quest to shovel more coal into the furnace to keep the train moving (make money, honey). I’m dramatizing a bit for effect, sure, but the sentiment is accurate and understanding is the first step toward recovery. Don’t forget to be kind to yourself!

You gotta stay positive — not by force but in your core perspective on living. Prisoners of war survive when they keep their mental state in balance and don’t slack on the little things, that, in context have no real value, such as shaving and keeping up appearances for themselves.

Stay positive,

-Clayton

2024 01 08

Water on car. December, 2023. Chicago. © Clayton Hauck

Part of what I’ve been photographing a lot lately has been more abstract, textured images to use as backdrops for my “Keep it 100” portrait sessions[1], where the background changes every second, cycling through various images I’ve made recently. Before doing these sessions on a regular basis, this is a moment I would've passed over. Is it a stunning image? No, but it does have a lil something going for it… and it’s fun to incorporate as one detail in a more detail-dense portrait.

It’s easy to make a good image, the hard part is figuring out what to do with it. I’m still figuring that bit out myself and likely always will be.

-Clayton

[1] inspired by artist Jeremy Cowart