2025 06 19
On the road, Ill Wandering. Rushville, Illinois. March, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Here’s another image I printed for the show I’m hosting this Friday. This frame was a bit of a happy accident as a scrambled to capture the full moon while driving, but it’s the motion blur that makes it work. I will say, I prefer the color version of this with its beautiful and moody end-of-day light, however, I pushed myself to further explore black & white conversions for this show, since all of the images from David Catalano are without color and I didn’t want to stand out. Even though I typically prefer color, I do also love b/w and want to get better at processing images with tones I am happy with. Then, printing is a whole ‘nother challenge!
-Clayton
2025 06 18
House in spring. Mt Sterling, Illinois. March, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
I printed some recent Ill Wandering images in black & white, this one included, for a photography show this Friday, June 20th, at my studio. If you’re one of the three people who will see this post and are free that night, it would be swell if you could swing on through! There will be drinks and snacks, along with photos from two other photographers and our Realm photobook popup shop. In a way, it’s kind of like my own art photography coming out party, or at least that’s what it feels like.
More info about the event can be found here.
-Clayton
2025 05 15
Man walks downtown. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
This afternoon, I have a portrait shoot downtown. Perhaps I will have some time to sneak away and do some street shooting. In reality, I won’t. In a wild and depressing Sign of the Times: I am being paid more to make corporate portraits than I would be had I accepted a commercial project that is also shooting today. Commercial jobs are how I built a life in photography, and for the rates to be as bad as they have become, the struggle to stay afloat in the endless hustle of photography is real.
This is why I’m considering getting a “real job*.” But more on this another day, soon.
*job will still be of my own making and fully photography-focused.
-Clayton
2025 04 06
A downtown dog walk. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
I’m very much slacking on my weekly exploration goal. While I haven’t been hitting the streets nearly as much as I’d planned, I have been putting a lot of time towards personal work and development, so I’m not considering it a loss… it just hasn’t played out as I’d hoped. That said, I’m excited to get back out on the street and make some new work. I think the nicer weather will very much be a catalyst to make this happen.
-Clayton
2025 02 24
Streator, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Lately, I’ve been pondering excessively about what to focus my energies towards. Fortunately, I think my self-imposed marching orders have more or less been made and I am now on a path, for the remainder of the year at least, to see where it takes me.
One deterrent to creating new work is the internal struggle towards judging the work you haven’t yet created! Will it be unique enough? Will it be original? Will it stand out in a world so saturated with content it’s quite impossible to even comprehend!? The quote below, while clearly written in a time prior to social media, Ai, and content factories, helped bring some sanity to my overworked brain:
"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."
-C.S. Lewis
-Clayton
2025 02 13
I’m going to sound like a boomer for a moment but I must say, I will never take for granted the sheer amount of things that happen, out of sight, in order to enable our lives to be smooth and easy. Easy is a very relative term, but that’s not my point. While it may feel like the world is rapidly spinning out of control at the moment, it is perhaps helpful to consider things could be far, far worse. It helps me, at least. A chicken in every pot.
-Clayton
Moving things; ill wandering; somewhere outside Streator, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I’m going to sound like a boomer for a moment but I must say, I will never take for granted the sheer amount of things that happen, out of sight, in order to enable our lives to be smooth and easy. Easy is a very relative term, but that’s not my point. While it may feel like the world is rapidly spinning out of control at the moment, it is perhaps helpful to consider things could be far, far worse. It helps me, at least. A chicken in every pot.
-Clayton
2025 01 03
This camera is so far gone but I continue to use it nonetheless. I tell myself I like the look the layer of dust is giving me. Honestly, I kind of do. Each time I go to buy a new one, they are not available. Everyone loves the Ricoh, apparently. Plus, spending a thousand bucks doesn’t sound very appealing right now. It’s probably time to attempt a surgery and see if I can’t remove some of this madness. If I fuck it up in the process, maybe it’ll get me to shoot more film again!
While researching the photographer Weegee (for no reason whatsoever!), I learned that he did a bunch of work with prisms later in his career. Interestingly, he did a series of images of Marilyn Monroe where her face is all distorted but you can still tell it’s her. It’s the kind of thing you might find profound in high school art class.
This is why I think I’m making groundbreaking work here with my Dirty-Sensor Ricoh. It’s profound and amazing. Maybe I will start to sell cameras that have dirty sensors to high school photography students!
Oh yeah, the creative resolution post is still in the works. Will get to it, eventually. Probably.
-Clayton
The dust adds visual interest. Somewhere between Streator and Pontiac, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
This camera is so far gone but I continue to use it nonetheless. I tell myself I like the look the layer of dust is giving me. Honestly, I kind of do. Each time I go to buy a new one, they are not available. Everyone loves the Ricoh, apparently. Plus, spending a thousand bucks doesn’t sound very appealing right now. It’s probably time to attempt a surgery and see if I can’t remove some of this madness. If I fuck it up in the process, maybe it’ll get me to shoot more film again!
While researching the photographer Weegee (for no reason whatsoever!), I learned that he did a bunch of work with prisms later in his career. Interestingly, he did a series of images of Marilyn Monroe where her face is all distorted but you can still tell it’s her. It’s the kind of thing you might find profound in high school art class.
This is why I think I’m making groundbreaking work here with my Dirty-Sensor Ricoh. It’s profound and amazing. Maybe I will start to sell cameras that have dirty sensors to high school photography students!
Oh yeah, the creative resolution post is still in the works. Will get to it, eventually. Probably.
-Clayton