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 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 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 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 21
Our first president. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
-Clayton
2025 11 20
I AM RICH. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
One thing I hadn’t previously considered is that perhaps the owner of this vehicle is named Rich. I think this goes a long way in describing the reality that I spend far too much of my time these days worried about finances.
-Clayton
2025 11 19
Kenneth at See You Soon. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
More images from the zine… my first zine… which is more of a book, depending on who you ask. It is also the name of this website.
-Clayton
2025 11 18
Classic martini. Rainbo, Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
It used to be the martini was a complete turn-off to me. The glassware shape was stupid and the drink wasn’t worth consuming. Of course, as we get older, our perspectives change. You learn, through the years, that most often things are classic for a reason, and it’s not unusual to be wrong about viewpoints you once held firm. Wrong and right is relative, for sure, but there’s no debating the martini is a classic cocktail for good reason.
-Clayton
2025 11 16
Haley & The Rainbo. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
If I’m being honest, my sister is the real reason I’m doing any of this art stuff. She’s always been more thoughtful and knowledgeable about all things art. I feel like a poser, by comparison. I’m working on it, though!
While watching this fantastic (as always) Alec Soth video (below), I both thought of Haley who loves to send and give physical objects while also contemplating how so much of what he says mirrors my own internal dialogue for justifying a career pivot towards photobooks and prints. I’m spending a ton of my time both printing my own work, leaning, and growing, while also now purchasing the work of others to sell in our Realm bookshop. This image is from my first printed zine — check it out! I promise I’ll stop hyping my blog soon, it’s just exciting to have physical work out in the wild and not yet something I’m used to.
-Clayton
2025 11 15
Cat. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
I’ve managed to be relatively okay at keeping plants alive mostly due to one trick I thought up, which I’m quite proud of. The way I remember to water my plants is that the first and the fifteenth are water days. Of course, I don’t always hit the days exactly, but I know that if it’s the beginning or the middle of the month, the plants probably need some water. They’re happy; I’m happy; it’s worked quite well for years now. That said, a few of my plants are now up there in years and clearly in decline. I’m not sure this method is so effective anymore and I likely need to come up with something more appropriate for my elder house plants.
-Clayton
2025 11 13
Allison. Chicago, Illinois. December 23, 2022. © Clayton Hauck
Have I mentioned I have a zine out now with the same name as this blog? I guess, since this blog didn’t yet exist in the days the images from the blog were made, I should share a few more of the images that are in the book but not yet on the website. Right? Mostly because I am behind on my posts and this seems like a relatively easy way to “catch up.”
-Clayton
PS if interested you can snag the zine here for the low price of twenty dollars!
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 03
Moon in the early night sky. Chicago, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
-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 15
Free money. Chicago, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I’ve really been going through it at work lately. My boss is just riding me very hard and I’m putting all of my waking hours into the job with no downtime to relax and enjoy life. The irony, of course, is that I am my own boss and these jobs I’m doing are of my own making (photography gigs, studio managing, bookshop tasks). While sitting in the newly-renovated Old Post Office eating a sandwich for lunch, after wrapping two early morning editorial portraits, it hit me — in my two decades of doing photography as a job, I can’t recall ever taking a single “sick day” or missing an assignment due to being sick, crabby, too tired, etc. Sure, non-shoot days are different and I fuck off quite regularly, but as a freelancer, it’s not really possible to miss an assignment for nearly any reason.
This thought occurred to me after I’d had an especially hilarious run of work, spending all weekend at the studio editing photos and managing events. A Sunday dinner event went late and I ended up leaving the studio at 1am, setting my alarm for 5:30am, getting up on three hours of sleep and driving myself to the south side to do a scheduled portrait shoot. As I frantically cleaned up the studio as efficiently as I could (the studio had to get clean as there was also a casting the following morning), I laughed at the situation I’d put myself in.
If I had a “normal job,” it would’ve been a no brainer to fib being sick and sleep in that following morning. But I’m a freelance photographer, so off I went to make the images.
The weird thing is, I’m glad it played out like this! Had I been able to skip the work day, I would’ve missed the most incredible sunrise I’d ever experienced as I drove downtown on the fluid, pre-rush hour Kennedy Expressway. The first portrait shoot went well; I met a stray cat; then I had a few hours of time to myself to explore Hyde Park and the surrounding area (been amazed by how big and beautiful Chicago is lately). I stopped in to Powell’s and grabbed a few photobooks before heading to my second shoot downtown, which was also an enjoyable one. After wrapping that, it was sandwich time, where I pondered the weirdness of my jobs and my life, while feeling fortunate I had it this way, despite the occasional extreme situations I find myself in.
-Clayton
2025 10 14
Allison gets into a burger. Chicago, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
-Clayton
2025 10 13
Vines, making their move. Chicago, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
-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