2024 04 10

Allison Ziemba in our backyard. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Today is the birthday of my favorite person, my partner, my soon-to-be wife, Allison! it is your birthday. Hope it’s a good one!

Love you so much!

-Clayton

2024 04 09

Chef Christian Hunter of Atelier photographed for Chicago Magazine (and used as the cover image!). Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

After roughly twenty years in the business, it’s rare I get to photograph a magazine cover (partly because magazines don’t really exist anymore) so it was an honor when my semi-regular client Chicago allowed me to do a cover shoot. My photography style tends to be a bit more gritty, dark, and authentic (agency buzz word alert!…are you listening, SEO?), which doesn’t always fit well in the glossy world of heavily-retouched magazine rack images. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

This image was made as part of a Best New Restaurants feature, which was a blast to be a part of and resulted in some great images.

While I’m still sort of feeling out what this particular website even is, I’m shying away from making it another commercial photography portfolio, so even sharing editorial images like this one doesn’t feel completely right. But we’ll see!

On the topic of myself, one other idea I had was to do a series on Instagram reels going into a bit more detail on how I made specific images. Tips, tricks, and observations. That sort of thing. Is this something people want or am I merely stroking my ego and hunting for social engagement? I don’t know! Sorting out how to exist within the current digital media landscape is endlessly confusing and largely frustrating. I guess at the end of the day you should just do things that feel right to you and not like a blatant grab for internet fame.

What do you think? Is anyone reading this? Blogging is the future so surely there will soon be tens of dozens of people interested in leaving their opinions in the comment section below.

-Clayton

2024 04 08

Sun behind trees. Grand Detour, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

I’m out today, heading home from my cookbook shoot in Nashville and chasing this total solar eclipse. I’ve never experienced one before so will be sure to report back tomorrow and let y’all know if my life is now forever changed and I have a new perspective on everything. Or maybe I’ll simply never return? We’ll see!

-Clayton

2024 04 07

Palmer Square Park on a foggy winter night. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

This blog is at a serious risk of becoming a place that only reposts Noah Kalina videos, however, per the rules of the blog, if I watch a video I enjoy I need to write about it here. Since Noah is posting videos like every damn day, this space is going to get all cluttered up with hashtag Kalina Content, which honestly might not be a bad thing.

Anyway, enjoy your Sunday, while taking in a few recent videos from Noah’s youtube channel, posted below.

-Clayton

2024 04 06

“Just Desert” (2019) limited edition print from The Camera You Have series. © Clayton Hauck

Self Promotion Clayton is back to let you know about another fun side project I kicked off last year. Art prints! Among my recent efforts to become more thoughtful about my artistic endeavors, I’ve been doing a limited run of really high quality mounted prints made from photos I’ve enjoyed over the years. The general concept of the series is to offer wall-hanging worthy works at affordable prices sourced from spontaneous photos I’ve made, sometimes with my pocket Ricoh camera, sometimes with an iPhone, thus the camera you have being the series’ name which is a saying I’ve always enjoyed (although don’t know the origin of).

This image was made in Phoenix at the Desert Botanical Garden at the very tail end of a trip to Arizona with my sister. The place is beautiful and, while I love desert landscapes generally, Phoenix is not one of my favorite places despite a few redeeming qualities such as the existence of this beautiful place. That said, considering I am a lifelong Chicagoan, it’s highly likely I will one day call Phoenix home since it serves as the unofficial retiring place of most Chicagoans. Until then, it’s just desert.

GIVEAWAY!

Each time I offer a new print from this series, I give away the first one. To enter, you can head to my Instagram account (@claytonhauck) and leave a comment on the post, like the post, or share the post to enter yourself into the drawing. Additionally, you can leave a comment here, below, to also enter yourself into the free giveaway (make sure I know how to contact you!).

Fine print: No purchase necessary. Winner chosen at random roughly seven (7) days after initial offer. Void where prohibited. Clue Heywood will automatically win a print if he somehow sees this post and leaves a comment.

-Clayton

PS - if you want to support the series monetarily, you can always buy one of these prints over on the website or reach out directly to inquire!

2024 04 05

Sunset scene with a skateboarder making use of the popular Slappy Curbs spot outside the Kimball Arts Center. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Sunsets are like a photographer cheat code. It’s easy to make a nice photo with a brilliant sunset. Because of this, sunset photos are cliche and not really something professional photographers like to make photos of, unless they are mentally-healthy mainstream photographers.

One of my best ideas was an app that has one and only one task (aside from gathering emails to monetize): send you a push notification when a pretty sunset is happening near you. I’ll never act on this idea so I will give it to you, dear reader, to act on and become an overnight millionaire.

Yesterday I briefly partook in a “photo walk” now that I am a film photographer and people take me seriously (before sneaking off early and going back to my studio to edit my client’s digital photos which are due before I can leave town and make more digital photos for another project). I spotted a fun scene in an alley and raised my Contax to make a serious film photo. It was subtle, just the way a car’s headlights were bounding off a puddle halfway between us, but just after snapping a frame, I heard an audible sigh from a photo walk participant as he mockingly-proclaimed, “an alley photo!” Just as instant shame set in, but before I even had a chance to turn around and awkwardly defend myself, but annoyingly just after I made the image, a massive airliner dramatically emerged from the overcast skies perfectly placed in my composition like a phantom sign that I indeed was on to something.

Follow your instincts. Don’t let the haters bring you down. Shoot the pretty sunset if it makes you happy. Shoot more film (and digital to pay for the film).

-Clayton

2024 04 04

Photo of an old car for sale that I would’ve made with a film camera if I’d had one at the time. Grand Detour, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Well, it finally happened. Was it inevitable? No, actually! But I’m (so far) very glad to be back shooting film again.

I’ll admit it, I regret ditching film over a decade ago now. Digital was just so easy, required for every paid job I’ve done, and in most ways better than film. Of course, this is subjective and many people will disagree (myself sometimes included). The one thing film has that digital never will is je ne sais quoi, or rizz as the kids are now calling it (I think?). Sure, you can fake it in post but what’s the fun in that?!

I could probably go way deep on this topic and perhaps soon I will as I start to get some rolls developed, assuming this camera I picked up at an estate sale even works, but for now I’ll keep it brief and proclaim my excitement to be back to film. The camera I purchased (for way too much money) is a Contax T2, which was always a dream camera even though it’s a trendy motherfucker and way overpriced for what it is. I don’t care, though, it’s beautiful (assuming it works)!

The first roll is already rolling to a lab in Cleveland (shoutout Dodd Camera, I’m open for sponsorships!) to get developed. Amazing how this once ubiquitous process is now a specialty service. I will report back soon with some results.

Another observation was how annoyed Allison was upon my return home and excitement with my new (hopefully functional) Contax. She rightfully so gave me shit for my constant negativity towards her anytime she busted out a film camera over the years. Damn. It’s so true and regrettable! Instead of getting excited for her to be shooting film I was secretly jealous of her for using it and had been knocking it as expensive or difficult or whatever as a self defense mechanism. Ugh. I’m sorry, Allison! Let’s go make some pretty film photos together!

Anyway, let’s hope this damn things works or I’ll be back soon to complain about how stupid film photography is.

-Clayton

2024 04 03

A Chicago greystone without immediate neighbors stands among grey cars. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

I’m out of town on assignment, expanding my mind through experience, so today will leave you with a quick quote from a famous American author and, perhaps more noteworthy, the namesake of my middle school in Wheeling, Illinois.

“A mind that is stretched by new experience can never go back to its old dimensions”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

-Clayton

PS - I’m in Nashville. Maybe leave a comment and let me know about that cool secret dive bar nobody knows about, will you?

2024 04 02

Life finds a way. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

I got an email with a job offer the other day. It’s weird because I haven’t applied for a job in at least a few decades, nor do I have a university degree or a CV, while my LinkedIn profile is a mess. Thinking it spam, I went to hit delete, however, was intrigued by the writing in the email. It had a tone I’m not at all familiar with and got me curious to hear further details. After giving the entire short-but-direct message a read, my bullshit detector was activated but not enough to make me go away just yet.

Admittedly, the job sounded easy. It was almost tailor-made for me, which also had me wondering how this person even found me. I went to Google and started digging but no information about the email sender, or his company, was found anywhere online. Again, thinking it spam but still somewhat curious about a potential easy-money gig that would also allow me to maintain the personal freedom of my existing freelancer lifestyle, I crafted a reply to get a bit more information: who is this person, what is this company, how did you find me, why me?

The salary being offered was generous. The task was essentially to be a photographer, as I already am. I would be supplied an ongoing, never-ending, list of things, people, and places, that I would be tasked with photographing and video recording. Quality is somewhat important but not the highest priority. Most importantly, the copyright of all the work I produce would remain with me — no work for hire clause at a full-time position seemed too good to be true, and in hindsight was the tell.

Sidetracked with visions of how this new assignment could completely change my lifestyle for the best, I bypassed consulting with any friends or loved ones experienced with having normal-people jobs unlike myself and instead told the mysterious emailer to send me the contract with a verbal commitment to take the job, while thinking I could quit at any time if it did turn out to be a scam or something weird I hadn’t considered. It was a fully-remote position with paid travel and no office to report to. They have no physical location and he told me he himself was based overseas and I would likely never even meet him in person.

After receiving the contract mere seconds after emailing him the request, I sat on it for a day, then two. Feeling a need to come clean to someone, I called my agent and told her the situation. That I would be mostly unavailable for new commercial assignments for a while and I hope she’d understand but this opportunity was too good to pass up. She is great with legal contracts so offered to read it over for me and agreed with my take that it almost sounded too good to be true; not at all what we’ve been familiar seeing from clients lately who ask for the world on most assignments. Sad to see me go, she did ask one request of me before accepting the position. Even though I woundn’t be working directly with my new boss, she said I should at the very least meet him over a zoom call to catch his vibe and a feel for who I’d be further enriching through beautiful imagery. I agreed, as this sounded very reasonable and smart, so requested the meeting as my last stipulation before signing on to my new job.

The reply came in a bit more delayed than his usual promptness and the tone was a bit concerning. Still, I had visions of Japanese travel and strolls through our national parks in my mind so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Now look, even with my new-found blindness to reality while dreaming the big dream, I’m still a professional photographer, trained on visuals, pouring over them endlessly day and night. Because of this, when the mysterious emailer joined our zoom call, precisely at the time scheduled, my heart sank, pools of sweat developed in my armpits and my face turned red. I’d been had.

AI technology has become very good, very fast, but it’s still not perfect. My future boss who I was now meeting on a video call was not-in-fact human but an artificial intelligence personality. Upon learning I was no longer buying his routine, he calmly (and weirdly) asked me if I was still open to working with him on the assignment while ensuring me the money was real and that he could prove it by send some to my bank account iNsTAntLy! He said he was already working with dozens of great photographers who would become my co-workers, while listing their names in hopes of convincing me. He just needed more content! Get mE the cONteNt! When he mentioned both Ansel Adams and Annie Leibovitz were on staff, I started laughing, which had the terrifying effect of enraging him. Immediately, the previously humanlike face began shifting and deforming into a vile creature while he hurled insults and threats at me. He firmly let me know he’d be directing all of his dark web resources into hacking my computers to gain access to my digital photos and simply take them for freeeee.

…

A few days later, the news reports started to come out. Tech bros had been funding fully autonomous corporations and letting them loose into the economy. Many failed, sure, but some started doing very well, growing their bank accounts into the millions and a few even into the billions. One artificial corporation got so drunk on success it tried to file for an IPO on the NYSE. I was never able to dig up any info on my specific almost-boss, however, there were a bunch of similar companies who had been making lots of money by growing social media accounts and selling merch on various ecommerce sites. The machines apparently figured out that all the imagery they were sourcing from the web was fairly easy to trace or a noticeable tell to prospective buyers, so in order to gain a competitive advantage over the other AI competition, a few of the artificial corporations tried to hire humans to make the imagery for them to give it a more human touch.

This is a true story, written by a human, March 28, 2025.

-Clayton

2024 04 01

Kate Condic stands in as a subject for my Keep it 100 portrait session. While not quite on Kander’s level, I do enjoy this work. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Nadav Kander is a favorite of mine. His series on the Yangtze River (“The smallness of man and the bigness of their ideas”) was super influential and really stuck with me as a young photographer and his portraits to this day are among my favorite from any working photographer. This video (linked below) popped into my feed and included some really nice takeaways. The channel, Graeme Williams - Photographic Conversations, I am also finding very much worthwhile, so recommend taking a look yourself if you want to dig into photography a bit more.

The takeaways I had which I aim to incorporate into a new personal photography project I have brewing involve his method to approaching a series of work:

• “Let the work happen and then find out what it means to me.”

• Use word association in a series project: flat, slow, quiet, dissolving, ending, becoming, insignificant — then use that to help guide the feel and vibe of the photos. This will help you define the images you aim to make.

• Build a scrapbook of paintings, photos and artwork that helps further build the feelings and emotions of the series to help you translate them into images. 

• Composition then colors and tone. Strong composition is most important; “a strong composition communicates as much as literal information.”

• Then translate all these vibes into photographs using your own skills.

Perhaps this is as helpful to you as it was to me.

-Clayton

2024 03 31

A winter stroll through Palmer Square Park. Hazy nights are a photographer’s hall pass. Chicago, Illinois. December, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

It’s Easter Sunday, so I’m off being a good Catholic boy. Shout out to my mom who is my #1 reader and un-paid PR person.

xoxo

-Clayton

PS - I’ll be in Nashville all next week for work. Let’s see if I managed to pre-load enough blog posts before I left town to keep this daily blog rolling.
PPS - if you have any eating or drinking reccos in Nashville (America’s most overrated city!), please let me know (I don’t dislike Nashville, it’s just very much overrated)!

2024 03 30

Artist & designer Craighton Berman in his studio in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

It finally happened — I came across AI-generated art that I really like.

That said, the human writing is what makes it stand out, along with an outlandish subject which makes the weirdness of the AI benefit the story instead of detract.

Things are moving fast. Good luck out there, my friends.

-Clayton

'air head' is one of the first short films made using #Sora by @OpenAI.

the response so far has left us floating.🎈 pic.twitter.com/bBR6IMZQ8M

— shy kids (@shykids) March 25, 2024

2024 03 29

Da Sears Tower! Da tallest building in da world! Da pinnacle of human ingenuity! …until it wasn’t. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

Another Tangent Idea post today inspired by Morgan Housel’s Same as Ever book. It was almost in passing, in a chapter discussing how things change and it’s harder to maintain a competitive advantage than it is to gain one, he brought up the death of Sears. Being a lifelong Chicagoan I’m very aware of Sears but even I don’t fully appreciate how big it was in its prime. It was so big they constructed a building larger than anything previously constructed to satisfy the demands of the company. Of course, things changed. Today, if you ask anyone under twenty years old, chances are they won’t even know what you’re talking about if you bring up the word Sears. Even this photo of this momentous building ended up in my scraps folder, discarded for another time, until Housel’s mention in his book passed my ears and spurred me to consider it again. It’s remarkable how such a grand idea can turn into such a monumental thing, something everyone knows, only to be completely forgotten a few decades later because the tides have turned and the wind is blowing in a new direction.

This blog post is merely me thinking out loud about a topic that would likely fascinate me for the rest of my life if I chose to really focus on it.

At it’s peak, the Sears company was so large, it owned portions of many famous American brands: from Allstate and Land’s End, to Dean Witter and Coldwell Banker. They were efficient and thought of as the gold standard in what an American corporation should aspire to be. But then they died. Globalization changed the dynamics of the world and they were forced to diversify into new business lines which they were not previously familiar with. Inequality rose and people either wanted things cheap or they wanted them luxurious. The core business of Sears, once quenching the insatiable-retail thirst of the American middle class no longer had a customer base.

Does a book exist which examines the Death of Sears in gripping detail? If not, it should! If not, maybe this is my life calling to write such a story.

-Clayton

2024 03 28

Bare apple tree in winter with a pretty sunset above. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

I’m a writer now! In learning how to make a living at my new profession, I stumbled across this bit of wisdom from Jason Zweig of the WSJ who says there are three (3) ways to be a professional writer: 

1. Lie to people who want to be lied to and you’ll get rich.

2. Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.

3. Tell the truth who those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke. 

Please come back tomorrow to read my breakdown on 50 ways to get insanely rich without doing a lick of work. I swear this list is vetted and is a favorite of Warren Buffet and Sir Edmund Blackadder. Blackadder did a ten-part Masterclass breaking down how he’s made over $20 billion and only let in 24 students who each had to pay $1 million, which he donated to charity because he’s a Sir. I was fortunate enough to be one of the class members and will release my gained wisdoms in tomorrow’s blog to you, dear reader who wants to be lied to, in exchange for one page view to help inflate my depressed ego — see you tomorrow!

-Clayton

PS- this Zweig nugget is brilliant and applies to life in general, not just writing. It was mentioned in Morgan Housel’s book Same as Ever, which I will hopefully go into more in a future blog entry. It’s full of amazing wisdom, most of which can be found on his company blog. His previous book The Psychology of Money is fantastic and highly recommended as well.

2024 03 27

Sun reflects off a building on my morning walk with a dog we’ve been watching. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024 © Clayton Hauck

Everyone is talking about this book that unlocks your creativity. You likely know the one: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. While, yes, I’ve read it and do find it worthwhile, I tend to be suspicious of things that everyone seems to be talking about. That said, it doesn’t matter where your creativity comes from or what motivates you to make the work, so long as you’re making it (so please use my affiliate link to buy a dozen copies of Rubin’s book for all your friends).

On the topic of making art and finding inspiration, this video (below) popped into my feed and pushed me to write about it here, per my blog rule: if I consume a video on youtube which I like I must create something relating to it here. The ying and the yang of creative time management, or something like that.

Bronques was a sort of rival/colleague of mine a few decades back in a time we both had popular nightlife photo blogs (his far more popular than mine). For me, that era of going out many nights, making photos, and then posting them online for anyone to look at was formative to me. Connecting Bronques’ video to how it relates to this is the idea of shutting your brain off when creating. Back when I was doing everyoneisfamous.com, there was very little big picture thinking going on. I was on auto-pilot each night, doing my best to make fun and compelling images people might want to see and then posting them as soon as possible without any hesitation fueled by what people might think of them, or me, or whatever! These days, I try to live by this same mentality but getting old weighs on you in so many ways, and I often find myself, as an example, second-guessing what to post on Instagram. This is far from the locked-in and confident artist approach I am now putting more effort into attaining.

Last night (while sitting on the couch, not partying), I was served a tweet showing a live stream of musician Deadmau5 reluctantly watching a fan-created vocal track, which he ended up immediately loving and using on his album. The fun takeaway for me, aside from the obvious one in that the internet enables this sort of thing to happen in the first place, was how instantly Deadmau5 knew what he was hearing was it, even though he’d need to modify some annoying filters the stranger on twitter had used. It’s that built-in level of taste or vision that sets people apart. How exciting it is when someone both has a strong opinion about something they made being beautiful and you agree with them that it is!

Consuming ideas, consuming art, wasting time. These aren’t necessarily bad things so long as you then take what you’ve consumed and turn it into something new. “You waste years by not being able to waste hours” was a line in an audiobook I was listening to this morning, which further connects into the theme of this post. Doing nothing is a good thing as it allows your brain time to work, being free to think and ponder or do a livestream on twitter with your fans.

In 2012, Deadmau5 got a random message from a 17-year-old boy who wrote and provided vocals to an unreleased song. Deadmau5 decided to react to it on stream, was absolutely blown away, and instantly signed the kid.

The song was eventually released and is one of deadmau5’s… pic.twitter.com/sXDc9CFL6x

— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) March 24, 2024

We all have brilliance inside of us, it’s figuring out how to best communicate yours that is the challenging part.

-Clayton

2024 03 26

Chefs at Maman Zari prepare dishes for diners. Photo made as part of a Best New Restaurants spread for Chicago Magazine. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

One of my favorite podcasts is Joiners, in part because they chat with local Chicago hospitality personalities (many of which I personally know), but also because they do a great job of covering a diverse lineup of people from all different perspectives of the industry. Recently, this episode linked below stood out to me in large part due to the portion of the conversation where they discuss finances, insurance, taxes, government bureaucracy, and all these things most of us creative types cringe about but are also forced to deal with. Owner Jason Vincent of some favorite Chicago spots went deep into his frustrations revolving around operating at a higher price point in order to help cover expenses such as employee health insurance.

After listening, the following morning a newsletter by Allison Schrager hit my inbox which touched on the same themes and helped me connect the dots a bit more:

When we look at estimates of food prices moderating it does not tell us the whole story because eating out has become important to many people’s quality of life. In the last century, many once luxuries became common. Dining out used to only be a special occasion thing that now many households of all income levels do regularly. And that made lots of people happy. So did other services that became common in the last twenty years—like ride shares and fast-free delivery of everything (and seamless returns).

A tight labor market and rising minimum wages mean many services we’ve taken for granted are now a struggle, and that will mean people feel poorer because the things they enjoy cost much more.

Inflation is something we’re all sensitive to and is perhaps most easily noticed when dining out. Customers getting shitty about restaurants raising prices to pay for things like health insurance is understandable in part because, yes, some owners are doing it in bad faith, and because higher prices means less eating out so people are sensitive to it generally, but for the owners like Jason who are trying to do the right thing and create a working environment that is fair for his staff, it’s easy to see how this whole situation might be incredibly demoralizing for many restaurant operators. In out new fully globalized world, diners and consumers have been conditioned to seek out the lowest prices, regardless of how they get low, often without considering the tradeoff they are making in pursuit of that cheap mega meal. Rents are up, food prices are up, labor costs are up, (my hospitality photography prices are up), so it’s only logical that prices will need to increase significantly to cover all these new costs.

I have no grand takeaway from all this, but a better understanding of an industry I partially rely on to make a living. The food scene has exploded in recent years with new bars and restaurants opening seemingly every week. So many people now rely on restaurant work to make a living as these jobs are no longer fringe positions, rather a significant portion of the modern workforce with wages often reflecting a previous era. It will be interesting to see if this huge growth in a relatively-new industry can be maintained now that pricing realities are catching up to it or if people will go back to making more of their meals at home to help offset rising prices that don’t seem capable of going back down.

-Clayton

2024 03 25

Reflection of sunlight off the moon, through the trees, on a cold winter night in Chicago, Illinois. October, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

Until fusion power is figured out and solves all of humanity’s problems, we’re stuck with nuclear fission power plants, which have their own drawbacks (Homer Simpson vibes) despite being far more green and efficient than all other methods of power generation currently known. More importantly, humans hate nuclear energy, so we do all we can to make sure it doesn’t exist anywhere close to where anyone lives. Germany just closed all of their nuclear plants, as did Japan after the Fukushima disaster (understandably… though have recently reopened some). The United States has only opened two new nuclear power plants in the previous three decades, while demand for energy only continues to go up.

Considering all the talk of AI taking over the world, a less-discussed aspect in making our automated futures become a reality is that the amount of energy required to do so is extreme and will require many new sources. Wind and solar help, yes, but are both inconsistent, have relatively lower outputs, and introduce new challenges. Look for nuclear power to suddenly become fashionable again as corporations realize their power needs are about to skyrocket. In order for the New Industrial Revolution to take place, (I’m just guessing here) we’ll probably need to double our energy capacity. Convenient timing considering climate change and the race to pivot to renewable energy.

Unrelatedly, one fun fact about Illinois is that we produce more nuclear energy than any other state. It’s a small fact that helped motivate me to purchase an electric vehicle, as burning coal to power your car isn’t any better than filling up the tank with gasoline.

Anyway, I bring all this up because it came to mind after watching a Noah Kalina video I liked, so as the website rules go, was required to write about here. I had no idea there used to be a nuclear plant on Long Island (home to many rich and powerful people!) and (therefore) it only operated for a few years even after they spent $6 billion to construct it (insanity!).

-Clayton

2024 03 24

DP Herman Asph atop a ladder during a recent commercial shoot. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

I’m a director, baby! I’m also a behind-the-scenes photographer. And a blogger. And an accountant. And a studio manager. And a writer. And a regular photographer.

Is it okay to start a sentence with And?

Nobody reads the Sunday blog posts, but I’m not doing this for you (really). I write to clarify my thoughts, mostly. With a brain working overdrive, it’s helpful to force yourself to translate your thoughts into words because sometimes, when you put the pen to paper, they no longer make much sense.

And that’s the post for today!

-Clayton

PS- do people want to see my commercial work on here? I’ve been struggling a bit about what exactly to include or not include. Are editorial assignments okay to share or personal work only?

2024 03 23

Stylish woman hands me my new iPhone before I ask if I can make a photo of her. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

Imagine: you’re a dopey teenager in a band and luck into making an album that becomes a global phenomenon. Then, five decades later, you’re still a musician but nobody wants to hear anything you have to say if it’s not a song off that one album that went global when you were sixteen years old and didn’t know shit about nothin’ (also: that’s possibly how you were able to make music everyone wanted to hear but more on this idea another day). It’s like being caught in a moment of time with no escape. Sure, you can do your best to ignore the chanting from the masses to “play something we know!” as Bob Dylan constantly has to do, but even someone as monumental as Bob Dylan can’t escape the chanting and is forced to hear it for the rest of his life.

Anyway. 311 did a Tiny Desk concert which got me thinking about time, music, art, and how sometimes when you make something that becomes big, it evolves and is no longer really yours, regardless of what US copyright law may have to say about it.

“Stay positive! Love your life!” -311, avid readers of Pointing at Stuff dot com.

-Clayton

2024 03 22

The 606 Trail during sunset. It was formerly an industrial freight line and today largely serves a purpose of leisure. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Having spent a good deal of time in small rural Illinois towns recently, in towns that feel largely forgotten to time, hollowed out and missing a majority of their people, towns with cemetery populations larger than that of their living, it was quite eye opening when I stumbled across a statistic recently. Of America’s wealthiest large cities by median household income, in the year 1949, you would never guess which names topped the list when driving their streets today. Sure, if you’re a student of US history, you can probably guess some of the names, but even still they were quite shocking to me. Before the Rust Belt was a place, the Steel Belt was a place and it was home to prosperous and growing cities which built much of the world’s most valuable products. Before these factories were outsourced and moved overseas, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America, in the top spot on this list. Subsequently, Detroit’s population (once 1.8 million) declined by about two-thirds (to a just over 600,000 today) leaving much of the city empty and abandoned. My parents both grew up in Milwaukee, which was at the time they kids the third wealthiest city in the country by these metrics, but out of ten combined siblings only one remains there today.

honestly wild pic.twitter.com/2ueqPdbItJ

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) March 19, 2024

Everything dies, even cities. But unexpected upsides occur as a result of hard times and cities are capable of surviving far longer than individual humans. There’s such a large supply of cheap houses in many of these towns, it’s not hard to imagine an influx of young people from across the country desperate to get a taste of the Remains of the American Dream. We’ve already seen Detroit rebound rather remarkably from its recent rock bottom. Last weekend I had fancy cocktails in both Ottawa and Rochelle, Illinois, both in beautifully-restored buildings on their charming old Main Streets.

These trends played out over decades and were caused by a wide variety of reasons, however, when viewed in such stark contrast of then vs. now, it seems hard to believe Cleveland was once the second wealthiest city in America in my parents’ lifetime! While this is super fascinating in it’s own right and a subject that can be examined with endless depth, what gets me even more interested is exploring how these trends might play out in the future. Demography is destiny, they say, and a large number of developed countries around the world are now losing population, just as America’s Rust Belt has in recent history. If we correlate what happened to the Rust Belt to the rest of the world, will Japan become the next Ohio? Will Seoul soon look Pittsburgh-esque? Or will the Rust Belt rise again and overtake China as the next global mega power?

I’m off to buy some property in Peoria…

-Clayton