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 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 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
2025 11 04
That Tiny House. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
That Tiny House. You can’t not take a photo of it.
-Clayton
2025 11 02
Rural road in rural Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
This image was made a year ago during one of my Ill Wandering outings, in which I scour the part of Illinois that is not Chicago for images that inspire me. The series has been loosely in the works for a few years now, however, it’s still largely a vague idea forming in my brain and I haven’t shared much of it publically. I bring all this up for a reason. [Preface: things take time] One major takeaway of mine has been that I’m still learning how to make artistic images. The end goal is not commercial photography (which I’m very trained in) or even photojournalism (which I’m also trained in), but images which provoke feeling more than anything. This specific image, I like, but it doesn’t do anything beyond being just okay. It’s a scrap pile image. A miss.
One other thing of note: this image was made just after a deer darted across the road. The deer was a bit too far down road any my reaction time a bit too slow, so he’s lost in the shadows. I feel like this is a perfect analogy for my mental place in the medium while this image was made. I’m still sharpening my senses and improving my skills, even after pushing the button for two decades. Each style of photography requires a different approach; a different mentality. We’ll get there. Maybe.
-Clayton
2025 10 18
Night scene. Chicago, Illinois. May, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Having lived in the same general area for twenty-some years now, it’s always a memorable moment when I stumble down a street that I’d never previously been down. This was one of those streets and I loved the vibes of this house.
The other day, I had the thought that it would be nice to make this blog a bit more robust, immediate, and interactive. I could post and write about things as they happen in my life and make the whole thing a bit more purposeful, instead of the random spur-of-the-moment grab bag it has been lately. But considering I’m days behind on posting and severely behind on other life tasks, I’m not sure how realistic of an idea this is. All that said, I think a bit part of why I’m so behind on various parts of my life lately is in fact because they are lacking a defined purpose. Posting a photo a day just because is nice in theory, but what’s the deeper meaning behind doing so? Is is just because I have folders full of images and I need to put them somewhere? That’s nice, but it’s not keeping the creative juices flowing as much as it had been and perhaps it is time to find a new angle around here.
-Clayton
2025 10 01
Night moon. Where’s your focus? Douglas, Michigan. October, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
The Anecdotal Evidence That Keeps Me Up At Night
by Clayton Hauck
The thing is, I’ve been a commercial photographer for over a decade now. Close to 100% of my working time and energies were put towards this profession, weird as it can be. When things were good, they were very good. And when things were bad, well, they were still relatively okay. I was able to make a respectable living doing this work and had close to zero complaints about the deal. It’s still kind of hard to believe I bought a house through making photos.
As I sit in my photo studio today, things are about as different as can be from the pleasant picture I’ve just laid out. Even the studio I now run was opened more as a compliment to my existing commercial photography business. While the reasons are plentiful, I’ll soon get to the specific one I thought of this morning while cleaning up the studio. But first a bit more detail on where my focus is now: yes, I’m still a commercial photographer but my focus is far more split both within the profession and outside of it. I’m now directing and shooting video, and putting a lot more effort towards the art photography world (perhaps teaching is in my future, as well). This has been wildly motivating for me, which is nice, but I’m still super level-headed about the realities of making a decent living through this line of work. Secondly, the studio that I opened without much thought to profitability is now being handled entirely differently. Making this place make money is priority number one, and if I can’t make that happen, it will have to go. Thirdly, I’m now running a photobook shop called realmbooks.co. Much like my newfound artistic photography practice, this side hustle has given me a lot of excitement and motivation, however, I’m equally as level-headed about its chances at producing a living wage for myself. What makes me feel better about this difficult financial reality is that it’s very complimentary to my photography work, and in many ways I feel like I’m back at school learning a ton of new things (without the baggage of student loans).
All this to say: my life is wildly different now than it was even a few years ago. My time is being spread very thin amongst all of these new practices and I have very little downtime to relax and socialize. Fortunately, much of the work is work that is often enjoyable. This helps me justify things.
So why the need to put myself into this situation, you may ask. Here’s the anecdotal story as told from my perspective as a photo studio operator:
Last year we had a client do a shoot in our space. It was all more or less normal aside from my own observation that the photographer was being wildly over-worked for what they were likely being paid. It was a relentless shot list (this is not unusual. Most of my shoots are also this way), but they didn’t have the budget for an appropriate support crew, so I got the sense everyone was miserable. This was the first warning. It’s increasingly hard for Clayton the commercial photographer to compete with the countless productions being run on a far lower budget than I will ever be able to compete with. It is what it is and I don’t take this personally, as I was once the young and scrappy photographer doing things for far less than the established photographers would ever think to do them for.
Fast forward a year and this same client pops back onto my radar asking for studio availability to do a photo shoot last minute. Cool! The space is available and I could very much use the rental income. A few days go by and word comes they decided against the shoot altogether. Fine, it happens. But the reason they decided against it is the thing that has me scrambling to find a half dozen new jobs — they’re just going to run the images they made internally using ai.
Some of us don’t think it’s coming. Some of us are scared shitless. Nobody yet knows how this will all play out, but my previous cautious optimism has cooled quite dramatically. Now, my current base-case thinking is that nearly all jobs linked to the creation of visual images for commercial use (be it stills, video, animation, etc, etc) will either be gone completely — outsourced to ai — or vastly diluted from a price-leverage perspective within just a few short years.
If anyone wants to rent my studio for a birthday party, wedding, baby shower, or hell maybe even an old-fashioned photo shoot you know where to find me!
-Clayton
2025 09 30
Mysterious house. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I’m not entirely sure why, but most times I pass this house I feel an urge to make a photo of it.
-Clayton
2025 08 16
That Tiny House. Chicago, Illinois. August, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I think it’s time to start a new ongoing series. That Tiny House. You may know it, you probably don’t love it as much as I do, but there she is!
In other news, I got Covid. In other other news, I think I may ditch this blog platform… it’s both a poor way to showcase my writing and a bad platform for sharing images. But yet another personal project is not what I need right now, so we’ll stick with it for the time being.
-Clayton
2025 08 13
Kenneth. Petzval lens testing. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Testing a fun new lens out at the dark bar. I shot a lot of video, as well, which I’ve promptly done nothing with. Classic me!
-Clayton
2025 08 04
Salt Shed. Chicago, Illinois. April, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Sometimes you leave the house and realize there’s a whole world of things happening. Often, when out, I get the sense that I really should be getting out more. But then I quickly rediscover my house and stay there for weeks or months on end.
I used to leave the house all of the time! This year, Lollapalooza came and went and I hardly even noticed it happening. I’d get more into this, from a photographer-that-used-to-be-there-every-year’s perspective, but I honestly don’t think it’s worth my time or yours.
See you out there!
-Clayton
2025 07 01
Dead plant. Chicago, Illinois. June, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
While out doing yard work this morning, I was pondering the idea of time, and how it’s so beneficial to work on tasks with the figurative wind at your back. It took me hours to give our yard a minimal dose of needed water, as I aim to help the plants I wish to thrive grow as big as they can in the time they have. Had Mother Nature decided to do the job for me, it would have been completed in mere minutes without my assistance. This may be an obvious observation, but lately I’m using this analogy quite a lot in my own life. As my list of tasks grows larger than possible to accomplish as one person, I can either choose triage or expand my capabilities through the help of others. Neglect is, of course, also an option. Like this plant, parts of my life will wither and die, with likely undesired weeds taking their place.
The garden is life. Everything can be compared to the garden.
-Clayton
2025 06 07
The moon over White Pines Forest State Park, Oregon, Illinois. May, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
On Saturday mornings, my routine is to watch my rocket show after waking up. I put on my glasses, stumble downstairs, grab some cold brew and see what sort of wild adventures humans are up to this week. The show is a weekly youtube production by Marcus House which succinctly recaps whatever space exploration news happened during the week. This new hyper-focused DIY sort of media is one of the reasons I continue to be obsessed with youtube and spend far too much time consuming it.
Anyway, if you’re like me and find space exploration fascinating, check out Marcus’ channel.
-Clayton
2025 05 07
A storm is a-brewin’. Olney, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I wrote a thing about an annoying work situation but feel like I can’t talk about that publicly, even without naming names, because it will get into the ears of the people I was writing about and nothing good will come of it. What I will say, however, is that the photography gods are doing their best at keeping me away from commercial photography sets these days. Portraits is what I do now. That, and Illinois Wandering. Oh, I’m also really excited about some video ideas I have. Perhaps losing bids is a good thing, after all.
-Clayton
2025 05 06
People on the move in May. Chicago, Illinois. May, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I love the feeling of springtime, aside from the allergy flare ups. Yesterday, I got hit with a paralyzing bout of allergies. I’m not sure what it is, but I know it’s the worst.
-Clayton
2025 04 04
Car. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
There’s this car on my block that I have obsessively been making photos of. I don’t know enough about cars to know why I like it, but I think it’s a Japanese import, and I love the old-school lines. This is one of the pictures I made, edited in a style that I don’t normally do. The digital grain melting into the fine snow particles is nice, I thought.
-Clayton