2025 05 08
Slappy Curb. Chicago, Illinois. May, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
When I signed a five-year least to put my studio inside the Kimball Arts Center, I thought I’d be shooting photos of skateboarders all the time. I thought we’d be wrapping commercial shoots upsatirs, then heading down to the brewery also located inside the building for wrap drinks with the client. Wining & dining. I had it all planned out and it was going to be great!
Three and a half years later: the bar is closed (lack of customers), I’ve only photographed Slappy Curb a few times, in passing, and the only shoots even happening up here aren’t mine (lack of clients). Life doesn’t always play out as you’d imagined, but the imagining I did, which led me down this path, isn’t something I regret doing.
I’ve always felt a bit uncomfortable having money. I think I get it from my dad, but the fact that I was able to buy a house at age thirty and pay more for a car than I ever imagined possible has always left me feeling a bit uneasy. There was a day recently, amidst my commercial photography career slump — no money coming in but steady bills to be paid — walking back from the hot dog stand down the street with a sack of cheap food and less weight on my shoulders. I felt free. “Less money, less problems,” I thought. This is, perhaps, self-soothing spin, but it was a distinct feeling of belonging that made everything alright. I no longer felt out of place in my neighborhood, a relentless aura of shame hanging over my head that I somehow had more digits in my bank account than rightly belonged to me.
One thing I’ve gained since that lease signing is a firm appreciation for earning a buck. This is not to say I wasn’t a hard worker previously, but I think I was riding on Easy St. a bit too long while the gettin’ was good.
You may think I sound like a crazy person, but I’m still dreaming of growing and expanding this space. Like a simple Iowa farmer building a baseball field amongst the corn. (Another lesson I’ve learned: building it does not guarantee they will come.) Why I have these urges as I sit in an empty room, struggling to cover the rent, I do not know. But it’s how my brain works. Try for something. Go for it. Dream big. Make it happen. Once your back is up against the wall, you’ll figure out the right response. But what’s the fun in not trying?
-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 05 05
Another Busted Car. Chicago, Illinois. March, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
I’m falling behind on posts lately! Perhaps I should pivot the blog towards Busted Car content. I have plenty of it…
-Clayton
2025 05 04
Dont Slam Doors, a reminder. Chicago, Illinois. April, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
May the forth be with you.
-Clayton
2025 05 03
The trees off River Road. River Grove, Illinois. April, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Previously, we visited this tree after a trip for dogs & daiquiris (see: 2024 02 20). Gene & Jude’s and Hala Kahiki tiki bar is a potent one-two combo.
I’m still not working in black & white as much as I’d like to be, I’m just such a sucker for color. It’s hard to be interested in so many things. Sometimes I wish I was a simple tiki bar or hot dog shop proprietor — order da dogs, make da dogs, get money for da dogs, repeat. The grass is always greener, as they say.
-Clayton
2025 05 02
Dinner at the studio. See You Soon, Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
The studio has been kicking my ass lately, to be blunt. I’m optimistic we’re out of the worst of it and excited for the idea of some more time to focus on the other things I’d love to be focusing on. Writing, video projects, a photobook shop popup, photo show, perhaps even a couple paid photography projects if the photo gods allow it!
-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 04 30
Smile! Chicago, Illinois. March, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
You are on camera, every day, nearly always. Your face muscles should be exhausted from all the smiling you are doing.
-Clayton
2025 04 29
Bare trees at sunset. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
One issue with being a commercial photographer for well over a decade is that you are distinctly aware that most people don’t want to look at pictures of bare trees and old houses. “Post more bangers!” my brain tells me, relentlessly.
“But I’m doing this here blog for myself,” I constantly remind myself. And I like these pictures. If I like them, surely a few other people might also enjoy them, right?
Summer is almost here. Soon it will be hot girls in bikins filling these pages, with subliminal ads for liquor & cigarettes. I’m working on securing a few sponsorship deals.
“But I haven’t had a blog comment in almost a year! What am I even doing here?” my brain wonders. The sponsors have also been concerned about my engagement.
On another note, I use this space to experiment and explore. I’ve been editing images in new and different ways and I quite enjoy how this one in particular came out. I’d post a before and after but that would ruin the magic, so I’ll let you use your imagination.
It’s the small things. Do them every day and they will add up, after a while. Maybe.
I hope you enjoy bare trees as much as I’ve learned to enjoy them. Nature’s fireworks.
-Clayton
2025 04 28
Trees and stuff. Nashville, Tennessee. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Welcome to a new week, it’s Monday!
This image has been in the folder for over a year now without getting posted. It was nearly deleted at least a dozen times. Well, today is the day, lil buddy!
I call it a buddy because of the budding new leaves throughout the image. There is something about fresh new spring leaves that really makes me happy. I guess, as is usually the case, people just like new things. I haven’t been able to fully understand why this is, but politicians aren’t holding grand ribbon cuttings at the end of rehabilitation projects; car companies aren’t advertising last year’s line of vehicles; and even Alinea, the fanciest restaurant in town, is now an “easy” reservation (as long as you have a lot of money).
Despite this image being old, I decided to give it a shot on the big blog. I like that the tree trucks stretch through the entire frame without actually showing any limbs or leaves — yet the entire background is filled with leaves!
Vertical images aren’t easily viewable on this here blog. Really, I should redesign this thing to better showcase images, even through words has always been the main focus around here.
I’m rambling now. Perhaps a more thoughtful post about new vs old is appropriate.
Now, I need to go make some new photos to pay my rent, despite having dozens of hard drives filled with old images. People like new.
-Clayton
2024 04 27
Somewhere near Thawville, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Overheard today outside of a bookshop in Spring Green, Wisconsin: “If we’re lucky, they’ll put us in the same concentration camp!”
Dark humor to get through dark times.
-Clayton
2024 04 26
Abandoned house. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how time slowly eats away at things. This tree on our block has been slowly losing limbs. This house, behind the tree, has been sitting abandoned for years now, exposed to the elements, the wood surely rotting away and losing its strength. It’s a decision we can make, to hold on and keep gripping. But after enough storms, even the strongest among us eventually choose to allow nature to take its course.
Without death, life is not possible.
Eventually, the for sale sign goes up, and if luck plays any part, new life is breathed in and a new start can begin. The train depot becomes a hotel. The hotel becomes apartments. The cobbler becomes a scarf shop, then a music studio. Time is a flat circle, you hear on television show, a line the writers lifted from a book, which was stolen from a spoken tale. With luck, your circle will be one filled with joy and adventure.
-Clayton
2025 04 25
Ricoh warehouse. Chicagoland area. March, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Recently, I found where my camera comes from! It’s a nondescript warehouse building in the Chicago exubrs, set among a sea of other nondescript warehouse buildings.
Actually, the camera was born in Asia, packaged, put onto a truck, then placed onto a uniform container box, stacked onto a massive boat, sailed around the world, landed in Long Beach, unloaded onto a truck, placed onto a train, moved across the country, unloaded in a nondescript Chicago depot, placed onto another truck, driven into the warehouse, inventoried, placed onto yet another truck, driven to a camera shop in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, and purchased by myself, where it then walked it home, placed into my pocket and eventually made this image.
-Clayton
2025 04 24
Bare trees. Chicago, Illinois. March, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
The weather is turning and it’s beautiful outside. I love living in a location with defined seasons, and it is peak spring right now, so I am scrambling to post all my pretty pictures of bare trees before they are filled with leaves and it feels wrong.
Back outside I go to listen to the birds.
-Clayton
2025 04 23
Another Day, Another Busted Car. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2025 © Clayton Hauck
I’ll get to that zine printing one of these days…
-Clayton
2025 04 22
A building filled with dreams? Off the Belt Line in Atlanta, Georgia. May, 2024 © Clayton Hauck
Two thoughts today:
First. Commercial photography is in a funk. It’s easy to be pessimistic (guilty!), but it’s also constructive to take a step back and think things through. Last year, it wasn’t until May that I had my first large production, and the year turned out to be (not amazing, not terrible) solid. The overhead I carry as a studio owner is something that has made me far more sensitive to any gaps in revenue, which is something I am still fairly new to and learning to better navigate.
On the topic of being a studio owner, this building in Atlanta was one that I stumbled upon one afternoon while exploring the Belt Line. It reminded me of my building back home (The Kimball Arts Center) which is just off our version of Atlanta’s Belt Line, The 606 Trail. Immediately, my brain began to contemplate what I could do in the space. Perhaps a See You Soon Atlanta might be a fun endeavor, I thought!
Realistically, the studio business is a challenging one, and I’m struggling just to stay afloat inside the one location I do have, so opening another seven hundred miles from home is maybe not such a great idea. But this is how my brain works. I get excited about big ideas. They motivate me.
It was Chicago’s Daniel Burnham who famously said:
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us.
These days, “popping up” is the safe path towards pursuing a big idea. This new Big Idea exists in my brain and resides inside of another building off Chicago’s 606, however, I learned my lesson by going big the last time. This time, we’ll pop up and start small. If there’s demand, the big idea may follow. Time will tell, and I’ll get more into this another day, but it’s something that is keeping me motivated to push onward and forge ahead into the dark unknown.
-Clayton
2025 04 21
Greenview, Illinois. March, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
I stumbled upon this building while out Illinois Wandering last month and I loved the juxtaposition. Lately, this project is feeling increasingly close to home. It might be a stretch, but my brain is connecting these towns to the difficult times my commercial photo industry is now going through. After the industries and jobs left these places, they sit there today a reminder of what happens when society goes through big shifts. What this next shift will leave us with, I do not know, but I’m finding myself increasingly interested in exploring the last shift in hopes to better understand our likely future.
-Clayton
2025 04 20
“The best view in town.” Peoria, Illinois. March, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
-Clayton
2025 04 19
Joseph during a Keep it 100 session. See You Soon, Chicago, Illinois. October, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Another run of Keep it 100 in the books. This month I did 16 sessions, down from 19 sessions last run. Anecdotal evidence for sure, but it seems like thoughts of recession are starting to resonate with people. I figured having my new everyoneisfamous.com website up would help drive bookings to my affordable portraits, but it had no noticeable effect. Maybe it’s still too early? I’m not sure. But what I am sure about is photography is fucking hard lately. I think there will be a lot of used camera gear on eBay soon. Good luck out there, everyone.
-Clayton