2024 08 08

Watching the cool kids from my office. Slappy Curb. Chicago, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Lollapalooza just wrapped up. I haven’t stepped foot in a music festival in many years. Today is my ten year anniversary with Allison (!!), who I met while we were both photographing a music festival (Pitchfork). I used to be young and somewhat cool but these days I’m more concerned about the weather and crime. The news anchor made a comment that my old brain found amusing: during the weather report, they were discussing Lollapalooza and she mentioned that if you knew any of the names of the bands, you were cool. Chappell Roan performed to what has been reported to be the largest-ever crowd at Lollapalooza. I have no idea who Chappell Roan is. My first though was to wonder if she is somehow related to my friend Matt Roan (or local sports anchor Dan Roan). I am old, and not cool.

This whole getting old thing isn’t so bad, though. Sure I miss out an making photos of all the cool, young people. But I also have time to sit in my office and write blogs and watch the skateboarders down below me doing cool things without breaking a wrist or getting beer spilled on me. Yes I miss getting a front row view of the best bands in the world, but I recall ten years back writing a scathing blog about how I was DONE with music photography because it had become so over-saturated and demoralizing. I went looking for that text, which I’m sure is massively embarrassing, entitled and self-important, and thankfully couldn’t find it. I did, however, find a gallery of images from my final fest assignment, the one I met my future wife at, and many of the images hold up! And yes, it does make me miss the days of concert photography, but I’m also sitting on my couch chilling while watching another buddy do what I did fifteen years ago and I see how damn time consuming it is! The endless grind for little to no money. Late nights and early mornings. Getting paid in social media mentions, if at all. It’s definitely a job of passion and I used it as a spring board to get myself to another place. There are days I regret this decision and wish I’d stuck it out and continued focusing on the young, the cool, and the culture instead of chasing the financially-stable path.

While I may no longer be cool, I now have a ten-year relationship with a girl I love dearly and am about to tie the knot with. So I think it was a fair trade.

-Clayton

2024 08 07

Stickers to send a message. Chicago, Illinois. May, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Much like the surely-fun person who spent their time creating and posting these stickers, I do one blog post a day in hopes someone will wander by in the middle of the night, catch a glimpse, think it’s cute, snap a photo of it from their pocket Ricoh, and months later post about it on their own photo blog.

Here’s a dumb-fun clip from Beavis and Butt-head about posing for photographers. Apparently they’re making Beavis and Butt-Head again! I had no idea.

-Clayton

2024 08 06

Pop is warm. Busted vending machine. Chatsworth, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Pop is warm. My brain is off today. More fresh profound insights tomorrow, maybe. Perhaps I will get into fiction short form like I’ve been meaning to do all year. Maybe I’ll talk politics more like I’ve been telling myself is off-limits. How nice was it to wake up to the Walz VP announcement, though? A candidate that wasn’t manufactured in a political lab?! Who could’ve guessed! Surely we are either back on track or about to drive off a cliff, flames thrashing out the windows. Time will tell.

-Clayton

2024 08 05

“The cat’s on the roof again.” Vincennes, Indiana. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

It’s days like today that worry me about the future. Last night, I started seeing alerts about a huge market selloff in Japan. Sure enough, stocks around the world took a massive dump and made losses of historic nature. Sure, down days are normal, healthy even. Lower prices mean stocks are cheaper and younger people are better able to get in and enjoy larger returns. I get the logic and agree with it! What worries me isn’t the general up and down nature of stocks, it’s that we, in America, have decided to completely outsource our retirement funds to the stock market. Everything and everyone is now so reliant on the market to perform, and if it does not, for any number of reasons, many people will suffer later in life.

What’s that, you don’t want to work at McDonald’s into your eighties because the market is tanking and you can no longer afford to cover your grocery bill? Well, you better let us invade Iran to expand the friendly western economic markets! This country will eventually be forced to make drastic decisions out of financial necessity and we’ll gladly do it because we’re all tied into the same system, a system based on future growth and earnings in a world trending towards less growth and less stability. And our livelihood depends on it.

But what do I know? *heads to Schwab to buy more Apple stock because it’s down 6%* Oh wait, Schwab is down and I can’t access my funds. How reassuring!

-Clayton

2024 08 04

Airplanes landing in Atlanta through a double-rainbow situation. Atlanta, Georgia. May, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Yes, lately I have been becoming far more open-minded towards the spiritual or ambiguous side of things I might’ve previously scoffed at. This quote stood out yesterday while listening to The Artist’s Way. I think as a pro photographer it’s my job to “remove chance” from the equation to “get the shot” at all costs, however, clearly we can’t control everything and embracing the things we can’t control is a far better strategy than blaming yourself for them when they don’t work out. If this makes any sense?

“No matter how slow the film, spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer it has chosen.”

— Minor White

-Clayton

2024 08 03

Image made for Chicago Magazine at the best new restaurant: Warlord. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

As a longtime obsessive news reader, I’ve been hard on myself for shifting increasingly more towards youtube in recent years. A big part of why I started this blog was because I was concerned about the amount of time I was spending consuming youtube vs. creating art of my own. That said, I’m still wildly pro youtube and am amazed by the amount of top notch, well-written, interesting, and informative content (not to mention entertaining) which is available on the website. As with anything in life, balance is crucial and avoiding rabbit holes or becoming radicalized is always to be monitored.

The recent Trump assassination attempt has been on my mind a lot and continues to be wildly confusing and concerning, not because I think I know what really happened or how it happened, but simply because it happened at all, regardless the cause. The video linked below by RealLifeLore does a really nice job of summarizing the long list of assassination attempts against sitting presidents and people in important positions. Many of the events mentioned I had completely forgotten about or didn’t even know happened! When they are all recapped in quick succession, it makes the history sound so much more insane.

I enjoy considering historic events and why they happen while endlessly ruminating on it inside the ole brain of mine, even if I’m not “getting to the bottom of things”. Did you know a former mayor of Chicago Anton Cermak was assassinated while sitting next to then president-elect of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt? Had that single bullet struck its likely-intended target, the world would be a far different place today, and poor Anton would’ve been able to return home to the greatest city in the world. What a world.

-Clayton

2024 08 02

My bud Ken jumps in a puddle to celebrate his birthday. Chicago, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

It’s nice having friends. I’ve been a loner just about all my life, while fortunately maintaining at least a few core, close friends along the way. This year more than ever I have been appreciating and (doing my best at) focusing on maintaining friend-relationships. It’s remarkable how beneficial a solid friend can be. Let’s be friends!? You know where to find me. I’m here every day! See you tomorrow?

Shoutout Mr Yoder for being my model this dark and stormy night, and my friend every other night.

-Clayton

2024 08 01

A break in the clouds through a reflection in the window of a house. Chicago, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

I can’t believe it’s August. This year has just flown by, I think likely due to the fact that we’re still planning a wedding that’s going down in about a month and a half now. I can only hope time will slow back down once the wedding is behind us, but likely this won’t be the case.

I had been thinking that work was slow this year but I think it was largely a mirage and I’ve kind of been busier than ever. Previously, I’d have fewer large jobs with more downtime in between the shoots. Lately it has been more small jobs and a feeling of constant hustle. I’m also reworking my career a bit to focus more on video, which is time consuming in itself, while also contemplating a fully new and different endeavor on top of it all. It’s no surprise my hairs have been rapidly desaturating lately.

-Clayton

2024 07 31

Another day, another busted car. Chicago, Illinois. May, 2024.

While handwriting my morning pages (see: 2024 07 06) this morning, NPR played an audio recap of the month of July. What an insane time we are living in! It’s like there’s just such an endless amount of insanity that it all blends together and starts to feel normal. I don’t have any profound takeaway to follow this up with, but have been finding it helpful to ignore the outside chaos and stay focused on my own tasks and goals. Previously, I would’ve judged myself for this behavior, thinking it irresponsible to not know about the world I’m living in. I’d spend endless hours pouring over The Economist, twitter, The New Yorker, taking in as much information as possible to give myself an “informed opinion” on current events. These days, as an older, more experienced, and slightly wiser man, I know it’s not possible to understand the world and knowing things is essentially just another form of entertaining myself.

Stay safe out there, y’all!

-Clayton

PS - this reminds me of one of the greatest comedic skits of our time…

2024 07 30

A dish at the venerable Longman & Eagle. Chicago, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Photographing food changed my life.

Saying yes to something I wasn’t comfortable with changed my life.

Long story short(ish): In my early years as a freelance photographer, I spent my time documenting Chicago’s nightlife and music scenes. I’d go out many nights a week and post all my images on my blog, everyoneisfamous.com, which gained a nice local following (shoutout Mark Hunter, who I stole this idea from!). One day, one of the owners of a popular music venue which I’d often photograph reached out to ask me to take photos of a new restaurant he was opening. That restaurant was named Longman & Eagle and went on to become a food phenomenon in Chicago and beyond. They won Michelin awards (despite being a “dark tavern”), were visited by Anthony Bourdain, and featured in seemingly every magazine and food website in the country. Fortunately for me, those first big pushes of press and publicity were saturated in my images with my byline attached to them (usually). This, in turn, led to further opportunities from people wanting a piece of the hot action. But I almost didn’t even do that first job out of concern I wasn’t capable of making good food photos!

I was largely oblivious with all this at the time and did nothing to better capitalize on it; I just went about my business and made photos of whatever I thought was fun or interesting. Perhaps this was part of what the Longman guys liked about me, because one day, I got another email which changed my life. One of the partners (shoutout Cody Hudson!) had put my name into the mix when asked by an ad agency art buyer based in Boston (shoutout Carolyn Dowd!) who was organizing a massive project all across the country for Bank of America. I had zero experience in commercial photography, however against all odds, landed a multi-day project capturing local businesses in Chicago, Detroit, Houston and elsewhere for the giant bank, which paid me a day rate I previously didn’t even know was possible through photography. This job eventually led me to consider the thought that I could make photography a legitimate career; That I could one day own a home. This job eventually led me to land a partnership with an agent who I am still close with today (shoutout Erica Chadwick!). Me saying yes to getting out of my comfort zone and photographing some food is a simple little moment which has been such an amazing catalyst for my photography career and life.

I remember the feeling I had when he called. I’m pretty sure I even told him no, I wouldn’t do it. It wasn’t my thing. Fortunately he pushed me into it and here we are today, still remembering it’s often a good idea to get out of your comfort zone and try something new, because you never know where it will take you.

-Clayton

2024 07 29

Yet another Mr Peepers. Chicago, Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

This image is myself, stuck inside all day as the world passes on by me today. This is not to say I’ve had a bad day, it’s actually been a great day! But here I am scrambling to get a post up before the day ends, as I’ve been frantically designing and printing a new commercial photography portfolio all day today before the deadline hits tomorrow. Fingers crossed, I’ll make it in time — currently have thirteen of twenty-one spreads printed. Then I’ll need to punch and bind and pray it all fits together so that my agent can take it into an ad agency for a few people to casually flip thru and more likely completely ignore (while, yes, I sound like a negative nancy about this, I’m actually quite happy to be making a new book and feel like I should have done this years ago / plan to keep it updated moving forward even though it’s rare we bring printed books out into the world these days).

This image did not make it into the portfolio. But a future zine, it very well may!

-Clayton

2024 07 28

Colorful car, full of rizz. Chicago, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

If you’re a regular reader of this here blog, you’ve possibly noticed I’ve been posting a relentless amount of images of busted cars (this car isn’t busted, per se, but is an old vehicle nonetheless). I’m not entirely sure why I’ve been drawn to capturing these images, but the urge remains. It’s a sign of the times, as my buddy Don’t Fret might say. Sure, they are an easy subject but that’s kind of the fun of it.

Two subjects have emerged from this space as likely subjects for potential future photo zine projects:

• Busted Cars (self explanatory)

• Mr Peepers (pets looking out windows)

I’ve been printing at the studio and loving it. While it’s still very much a time-consuming (and expensive!) learning process, I aim to get some personal zine projects in the works in the coming weeks and this gets me excited, even if the subject matter is as simple as this.

Hit the tag link below if you wanna check out the other “busted car” posts and drop a comment below if you have any interest in purchasing zine from me in the future. I’d love to know if I should print one copy or maybe two copies. 😛

-Clayton

2024 07 27

Rainbow in Wilmette, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Today, an image of a rainbow. My career backup plan is to start a company making positive affirmation calendars. I’m heading up to Milwaukee this weekend to workshop this idea with some potential partners, along with hitting the lake to capture some fresh duck imagery. I’m optimistic we’ll have a successful workshop session and next week, I’ll be back with an endless supply of positivity, healing, and fresh vibes for the blog. Have a fulfilling weekend, everyone!

-Clayton

2024 07 26

It’s the subtle details. Nashville, Tennessee. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

I’ve always been a picture taker. Expanding on some thinking from yesterday’s post (2024 07 25), picture taking requires me to always be on the hunt for the image. It’s a never-ending collection of moments that pile up on hard drives until I am buried in them. Lately I have been contemplating what might happen if I were to mix a bit of making with a bit of taking.

Peter McKinnon just posted this great video (below) about photographer Matt Barnes, who takes picture making to the extreme. I know I could never take this approach myself as I live for the chance occurrence and feel like my skill is in knowing it when I see it. That said, in my professional role of photographer, we are constantly mixing the candid and natural moments with the styled and manipulated. It’s on these shoots that I’ll have an entire crew of people and props and lights and whatever else is needed.

What I don’t do, however, is use this approach in my personal work. Those moments are mostly always fully candid and happenstance. The image above, for example, isn’t a great image but it has some stuff working for it. One or two more fun details, however, and it might be elevated to something more special and unique. Where I struggle is in knowing what my true identity is as an artistic photographer. That’s partly what this blog is here to help me discover. Am I the guy who strictly finds moments? A true and dedicated street photographer. Or am I the guy who uses my creativity to produce artistic work via whatever path is needed to get there?

The idea that Matt Barnes is able to put all of this time, effort, and energy into creating a moment, then make two or three images and call it a wrap, and then print (I assume?) and DELETE-FROM-HIS-HARD-DRIVES the digital files once he is done with it is something I both love and will never be able to understand… which reminds me, I have thirty-five hard drives I need to back up *visualizes tossing them all into the lake*.

-Clayton

2024 07 25

Busted car. Chicago, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

One of my strengths as a photographer is editing. I have great patience and focus and can sit in front of the computer for hours, culling my images, adjusting color and tone, dodging and burning, cropping. I enjoy the editing process nearly as much as shooting and I feel strongly that photographers can learn just as much in the edit as they can while shooting. Often these lessons are subtle and subconscious. Noticing things that worked or didn’t turn out as expected. Finding the happy accidents and figuring out how to make them less of an accident on the next shoot.

One of my weakness as a photographer is editing. I fall in love with all my children and have a very hard time reducing thousands of images made on a shoot to hundreds of selects and then just a few… the vert best… final selects. My instinct is to keep more than I should, likely because of my background in video editing, just in case they might be needed for a future edit or work well in a layout. This is all fine and dandy, but what ends up happening is the amount of time I spend making final adjustments to my two dozen selects (instead of two or three) goes up exponentially.

Right now, I’m culling through my career-spanning folders (very unorganized, of course) of best-of-the-best selects as I work towards printing a new commercial portfolio. Clearly, 75% of the images realistically don’t belong in these folders and the fact that I now need to dig through the mess to get to the good bits is making the whole process drag on endlessly. The book is due Wednesday and I have 2 pages out of 36 printed. I’m out all weekend. The clock is ticking. I need to get back to work. Wish me luck.

-Clayton

2024 07 24

Catalpa on the corner. Chicago, Illinois. May, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Speaking of learning new things out of necessity, I’ve been doing a decent amount of photo stitching with my Ricoh GRiiix, which is the camera I use to make a vast majority of the images I’ve been posting to this blog. This image here was made from 3-4 different images taken with the intention of merging them into one final shot. Why do this, you ask? Well, my version of the Ricoh is the longer lens 40mm-equivalent, which makes capturing wider scenes, such as this massive tree, not possible from up close. In general, I prefer the slightly longer focal length, so when I really want a nicer image but the camera is not wide enough to get it, I’ll often capture the scene in multiple frames and stitch them together using Photoshop’s automate feature, which does a really nice job of it. In addition to creating the wider visual, it also creates an image with much higher resolution that a single image using a wider lens would make.

Not that I need more res for blogging but it’s a cool way of doing low-budget pseudo-medium format.

-Clayton

2024 07 23

Art and hands and colors and ideas. Emmy Star Brown at Vertical Gallery. Chicago, Illinois. May, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Today, a note to self:

I’ve been a bit hard on myself lately and I feel the need to remind myself of the original aim of this here photo blog. While walking to the studio this morning, I spent the walk thinking in my head about how to word what I wanted to say. While I was doing this, The Artist’s Way audiobook was playing into my ear drums but delegated to the background of my inner monologue. Fortunately, my brain picked up on it because the words being said to me were almost exactly what I wanted to say myself.

Remarkable timing combined with listening to what the Universe is telling me: It’s impossible to get better and look good at the same time. In order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. 

This blog was started on whim as a place for me to post words and text without the pressure of needing to be great. I’m a firm believer in limitations leading to improvement, so I gave myself some loose rules I would need to follow.

• No posting images from the archives (a few exceptions, sure).

• No posting images from personal projects unrelated to my daily artistic photo making (I’ve made thousands of images this year for a separate project, none of which have been posted here even though it would increase the quality of images being shown).

• Minimal posting of images made for paid assignments. Basically, if they are artful and fit the vibe or match up with something I’d like to write about, sure, but my aim is not to make this space my commercial photography portfolio.

• One post every day, regardless of whether or not I have anything I’m excited to share or have the proper amount of free time to write something thoughtful.

With these loose rules, the aim is not to become a rich and famous fine art photographer overnight, but to slowly rewire my brain to think more artistically each and every day. I realize most people will not care to look at my images of trees or flowers or cats or hands, but again, I’m doing this for myself. Some days I will have posts that I am proud of and share more widely. Many days I will not.

This concludes today’s note to self.

-Clayton

2024 07 22

Mr Peepers (cat). Chicago, Illinois. May, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

What are you looking at?

-Clayton

2024 07 21

Allison at Maplewood, modelling for my first roll of film in a decade. Chicago, Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

It’s Sunday. Nobody is here on Sunday. It’s a ghost town. That said, the internet is forever so I can’t just say whatever I want to say without eventually hearing about it from someone. A big part of why I’m doing this blog is to push myself more out of my comfort zone. To not hold back. To re-acquaint myself with the feeling of putting my art out into the world for everyone to judge. Sure, it’s not going to be a banger photo every day. Sure, I’m going to sound like a maniac on occasion. I’m not perfect.

I scroll through the gallery page and what stands out to me is that there’s not enough people in my images. Likely, I’m holding back when I’m out making photos. I’ve got a bigger post with further elaboration on all of this hopefully in the works.

If you want some distraction this Sunday and are at all interested in Chicago music history, check out the video below which just popped into my feed. It’s a tour of the city with DJ Terry Hunter stopping by all the historic locations in town. Youtube is incredible… still don’t fully understand why I’m blogging and not youtubing. One of these days.

-Clayton

2024 07 20

El train in the night over Logan Square. Chicago, Illinois. May, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

I think a lot about how great trains are and how regrettable it is that this country doesn’t have a robust network of trains like most of the developed world does. Sure, cars are fine, but there’s something nice and freeing about being able to venture out into the big city and not have to worry about where to stash your rolling metal box. Imagine a world with high-speed trains connecting all the great midwest towns and cities. We could wake up in Chicago, do lunch in Detroit and dinner in Toronto with almost no effort! Instead, just getting to Detroit from Chicago is basically an all-day affair, likely by car, or possibly on the six-hour, thrice-daily, “higher speed” train.

As someone who loves to explore new places, the train is the ultimate tool. While sitting at the bar early one evening in Union (beautiful photos on their website, btw! 😉) and hearing CTA trains roar overhead as they made a stop across the street at the blue line’s California station, we invented a game. We’d ask the bartender to pick a random number two through ten and use that number to guide the rest of our night. She picked four, so we settled our tab, crossed the street and whatever the next arriving train would be, we’d take it four stops down the line and explore any new-to-us businesses in that part of town. It was a nice little way to get out of our routines and see something new.

Later, we made this game into a full day and doubled down. One random number picked from a stranger led us to Bridgeport and another random number from a stranger led us to Chinatown, where we enjoyed some delicious steamed buns that would’ve never been on our agenda had we not ridden the rails and used the trains as our city guide. We were adventurizing!

-Clayton