2025 10 07
House. Dead End. Lake. Ashland, Wisconsin. July, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
The north is calling me. Next year, I may explore beginning a new photography project up in northern Wisconsin and Michigan. After some brief shooting this year and a previous trip a few years prior, I was reminded by how much Iām drawn to this area. Itās perhaps me getting old. After spending my 20s and 30s mostly heading south to exotic foreign lands, a bit of domestic oddity sounds quite appealing.
-Clayton
2025 10 06
No outlet. Chicago, Illinois. August, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
This new Casey Neistat video is more or less whatās been playing in my head for the last year or so. Still worth a watch as itās quite funny.
Last week I unfollowed a photographer artificial intelligence influencer on LinkedIn because all she posts about is leveraging ai for commercial use. Iām just so over it. You can find me at the book shop.
-Clayton
2025 10 05
Heading south? Chicago, Illinois. August, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
Itās finally time for fall, maybe?
-Clayton
2025 10 03
Art For Sale! Chicago, Illinois. August, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
As someone who has avoiding marketing at all costs for the entirety of his commercial photography career, I can tell you with ease that I hate it. The only way Iāve done it in the past is by somehow tricking myself into enjoying it (doing blogs, doing affordable headshots, opening a studio, yada yada). These are not really solutions but, in practice, new jobs that donāt efficiently help with marketing my core offerings. I know all this, yet persist. I still have a long way to go, but at least Iām finally acknowledging the problem and starting to make an effort.
This year, my two biggest areas of focus, broadly speaking, have been:
1) Changing my tendency to want to do everything alone. I need people if Iām ever going to succeed at scale (scale being relative here; Iām not looking to sell a startup or IPO).
2) Communication. Nobody will ever know the cool things Iām doing if I donāt tell or show them (duh!?)
This video below popped into my feed and was a really thoughtful and clear summary of whatās been on my mind a lot lately (also, his vibe is like the opposite of most influencer types, which is incredibly refreshing in itself). If youāre like me and loathe selling yourself as an artist, as a business, as a human, Iād give it a watch and maybe you can find some worthwhile tidbits as I did myself.
-Clayton
2025 10 02
Haley & Buddy. Dixon, Illinois. August, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
Hereās a recent favorite snap. Definitely need to get back into the habit of sharing images of people and a bit less images of trash on the sidewalk and busted cars. Weāll get there. I can never fully quit the busted cars, though. Excited to get back out to the farm maybe this weekend! Iāve got tons more images from there, as wellā¦
-Clayton
2025 10 01
Night moon. Whereās your focus? Douglas, Michigan. October, 2024. Ā© Clayton Hauck
The Anecdotal Evidence That Keeps Me Up At Night
by Clayton Hauck
The thing is, Iāve 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. Itās 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 Iāve 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, Iāll 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, Iām still a commercial photographer but my focus is far more split both within the profession and outside of it. Iām 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 Iām 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 canāt make that happen, it will have to go. Thirdly, Iām 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, Iām 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 itās very complimentary to my photography work, and in many ways I feel like Iām 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. Hereās 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 didnāt have the budget for an appropriate support crew, so I got the sense everyone was miserable. This was the first warning. Itās 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 donāt 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 ā theyāre just going to run the images they made internally using ai.
Some of us donāt think itās 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 ā outsourced to ai ā 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. Ā© Clayton Hauck
Iām not entirely sure why, but most times I pass this house I feel an urge to make a photo of it.
-Clayton
2025 09 29
Dead mall. Chicagoland. October, 2024. Ā© Clayton Hauck
My buddy who I havenāt spoken with in a while just asked whatās new?
My reply: Everything, kind of. Working my ass off trying to learn some new skills and invent some new revenue sources in a world where soon most visuals will be instantly generated by machines run on electricity that I subsidize.
Yeah, that kinda sums up my mood these days. Iām working nonstop, all of the time, in a seemingly fleeting attempt to keep my lifestyle afloat. Iām not sure it will work but I keep telling myself that if it does come to a worst case scenario, I will have plenty of company.
-Clayton
2025 09 27
Map of the outlying area of Dixon, Illinois. Ā© Clayton Hauck
I love maps. Previously, I mentioned my recent obsession with Open Front, a free online game in the style of the civ series. This game continues to fill gaps in my daily productivity. Now, a new game is about the drop which has me very concerned: Subway Builder. While I havenāt yet played it, I can already tell I will be spending many brain hours building train networks around the world. Good luck future productivity.
-Clayton
2025 09 26
Solo cloud. Somewhere west of Chicago, Illinois. August, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
In designing my new zine project, I wanted the size to be Goldilocks; not too large but also not too small. I like the idea of letting the images shine on their own, and printing too small can remove some of the magic, in my opinion. That said, going bigger gets expensive and becomes a hassle to ship and handle. I settled on 8ā x 10ā vertical layout, despite the fact that I wouldāve preferred a less wide (ie: an even smaller) form. The two factors that led me to compromise, in a sense, were: a) I much prefer horizontal images and get triggered by how much Iām almost forced to shoot vertical these days because of the cell phone. The winder aspect ratio allows for more room for horizontal images; and b) the added room on the page allows for some creativity in layout design. While the aim is to keep things relatively simple, I love the fact that zines are lower stakes productions and you can have a bit more fun with them. My goal is to partner with designers on future issues and explore more possibilities.
This image will likely get printed in a future zine. Be on the lookout for it in the year 2027. Seriously though, the āvisual journalā zines I will be producing will be running a few years behind when I actually made the images. They gotta cook, slow!
You can pre-order my first zine drop and snag a free (8x10) print in the precess here.
-Clayton
2025 09 25
Pointing at Stuff, now in zine form! Chicago, Illinois. September, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
Have you heard? Print is back! Iāve decided to take this here blog, or at least a new incarnation of it, and make it a printed book. You can now pre-order the first edition over on our photobook shop Realm. The process of making this (while not yet finished) has been thoroughly enjoyable and the aim is to put out two of these per year moving forward. Any pre-orders also get a signed print. Itās a so good you should probably drop everything and go pre-order your copy immediately!
Iāll get into more detail about the book in the coming days or weeks. Iāve got a lot of writing on the back-burner these daysā¦
-Clayton
2025 09 24
Another day, another Happy Barn. Kingdom, Illinois. July, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
Prevously, see: 2025 06 16
-Clayton
2025 09 23
Bare tree in summer. Franklin Grove, Illinois. August, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
-Clayton
2025 09 22
No Parking. Ashland, Wisconsin. July, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
Itās a bit surreal to spend a weekend with friends, bopping around Chicago and falling in love with the place all over again, only to open up your social media on Monday morning to read about how the president is pledging to āsaveā your city after Charlie Kirk pleaded with him to do so. I grew up in the same area as Kirk and attended the same high school as he did. Iāve lived in Chicagoland all of my life and love it now as much as I ever have. Obviously, we all have our opinions and perspectives on the world (and yes, of course there are issues here), but the stark juxtaposition between what Iām seeing with my own eyes vs. what Iām hearing from outraged folks on the internetā¦ and running our countryā¦ is maybe more concerning than anything Iāve yet to encounter in my life. An administration with total immunity to enact whatever policies it wants, choosing my own hometown to make an example out of, is not at all a pleasing thought, esp when you consider the perspective they choosing to view us by ā the enemy ā whom Trump admittedly hates.
Last week I had a dream about a missile flying overhead and exploding at a nearby but safe-for-me distance. It gave me the feeling that, while there are big issues happening around us, we are still relatively safe to carry on with our lives. It was still someone elseās problem. Then, an ominous motorcycle drone rounded the corner, clearly seeking us, perhaps for a new missile target. As I was startled awake, I couldnāt help but feel for the millions of people currently living in these exact conditions on a daily basis in Gaza, Ukraine, or elsewhere. Then I wondered if we might soon have to learn how to live with the bombs ourselves here in Chicago.
-Clayton
2025 09 21
MP shows off his battle scars. Chicago, Illinois. July, 2025. Ā© Clayton Hauck
Weāve now done 11 Realm popups. It has become a real job quicker than Iād imagined. It doesnāt help that my partner is out of the country this month, leaving me with much of the work to handle myself. I donāt mind it, but am starting to notice myself falling behind on things Iād previously been on top of, like updating this here blog.
Iām due to get some more thoughts out and writing helps me do that. Aiming to get a post about my portraits project up this week, and perhaps another one on the bookshop if I can find the time.
-Clayton
2025 09 20
A walk on the beach. Benton Harbor, Michigan. October, 2024. Ā© Clayton Hauck
I continue to get excited for sweater weather, but the beach weather just wonāt quit these days. Eighty degrees this weekend; eighty degrees next weekend. It might finally be time to move to Canada, eh?
-Clayton
2025 09 19
Sunset in the city. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2024. Ā© Clayton Hauck
-Clayton
