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 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 05 01
Garage flyers. Chicago, Illinois. April, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Considering the incessant flow of paper flyers that get put up on our garage door, they must have an actual financial benefit to the contractors, right? I’m thinking I might take it as inspiration and start flyer-ing the city with posters for my portrait offerings. Surely, that will help me get more jobs flowing my way through the incoming recession, right?
On a serious note: writing on this here blog nearly every day for over a year has started to show some benefit. Last week, we had a potential commercial project come through, which required the writing of a treatment (job proposal, basically). Historically, I always hated this process, as it’s wildly time consuming for something that very often leads to a dead end (not getting awarded the job). Having been regularly flexing my writing muscle (brain), the process was far more fluid this time around.
We’ll see if we have better luck landing the gig, or if it’s time to hit the alleys with a stack of posters.
-Clayton
2025 03 09
Sunset on Bloomington. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Chicago’s weather today was glorious. The first nice weekend day where everyone leaves the house and it makes the city feel alive with energy and humanity. It’s days like these that make me glad to live where I do.
-Clayton
2025 03 08
(Hidden) Busted Car. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
While out celebrating my birthday yesterday, I realized that my driver’s license had expired that day. Needing to drive to St Louis for a photo assignment in a few days, I was worried that getting this renewed in time would not be possible (also considering the state had determined I needed to pass a written test to do so). Fortunately, I spent Saturday afternoon at the DMV and made it happen after an hour or so of sitting in the waiting room listening to numbers being called.
Afterwards, we celebrated with pizza at Barnaby’s up in Northbrook, which has been on our list of spots to check out. The pizza was great and the place was wildly crowded with families enjoying an early Saturday night pizza dinner. As we ate, numbers were called out continuously as orders were ready, which made the whole experience feel appropriate post DMV.
-Clayton
2025 02 23
Another busted car. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
This car hasn’t moved once as long as I’ve had my photo studio across the alley, so approx. three years. It’s a dumb observation that makes urbanist me go a bit crazy, in that we give away so much of our environment in support of parking underutilized and decaying automobiles.
-Clayton
2025 02 21
Another Christmas tree to toss into the landfill. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2025. © Clayton Hauck