2025 06 15
Sun sets on the flatland. Thawville, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Now that I’ve been at my Illinois Project for over a year (granted, actual shooting time has been quite minimal as I’m mostly busy fighting the fight in the big city), I’m starting to get a better sense of what it is I’m looking to do. Early images, such as this one made a year ago, while nice, are too pulled back. I’m not a landscape photographer, but I was finding myself making lots of landscape photos. I need to get in the action and find the vibes!
Yesterday, at our third Realm photobook shop popup, while surrounded by some of the best art photobooks on the market, I met a local photographer. He showed me some of what he’s been working on and I immediately found myself lost in the feelings of inadequacy. This guy’s work is very good and surely he’s well on his way to publishing a meaningful book. While that in itself is great, immediately comparing myself to him and focusing on my shortcomings is not a productive reaction. Part of what makes art great is that we all have different perspectives on the world. It’s what makes us stand out. Trying to make my images look more like his, or someone else’s, is not the right approach, in my humble opinion.
That said, there are definitely productive takeaways that can be had from these tough interactions! Two quick ones:
1) Shoot less like an editorial photogrpaher and more like an artist. I’ve been a working photographer for nearly two decades and my brain has been trained to give the client what they want. Whether it’s a large commercial project or small editorial assignment, I’m a people pleaser at the end of the day. The trouble with this is when I’m out making work for myself, I’m finding myself shooting as if I’m on assignment. I am, in a sense, on a self-assignment but I default to shooting around a scene to get all of the angles and then spending a ton of time pouring over the selects, toning & adjusting, which is very time consuming.
2) Stop comparing myself to others. I’m not the next Ansel Adams and never will be, nor do I want to be! Many people will have better work than me. It is what it is and, instead of getting jealous, I should focus on the things I can control myself. Perhaps this is an obvious one but I think it’s important to remind myself of this regularly!
I’m considering a new section on this here blog with all of my Ill Wandering posts. If it does ever turn into something (a book, likely), it would be nice to have all of these thoughts nearly organized to look back on (and probably laugh at). If that’s something you would be interested in, let me know below!
-Clayton
2025 06 14
Weekend beers. Old Schlitz sign. Gardner, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I’m still trying to figure out what to post, what not to post, from my Illinois Wanderings. I’m still trying to figure out what the project even is. This is not a bad thing, it’s the whole reason I started this here blog. To feel things out; to figure things out. What is working and what isn’t working.
-Clayton
2025 06 10
A glance back in time. Pontiac, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I was sent this video (below) and told to watch it, after seeing it pop into my feed and deciding not to (I follow Smarter Every Day but am trying my best to cut down on my youtube time lately). I’m glad it did seep into my brain (thanks Dave!). Honestly, the video resonates with me in so many ways I’m not even sure where to begin. Instead, I will only suggest you give it a watch yourself and see what you take away from it (it’s entertaining, too!).
The one thing I will relate it to here is my ongoing “Ill Wandering” photo project. While out exploring the state, I encounter so many places that clearly feel lost to time. This idea that America has declined, or at the very least changed beyond recognition, is real for so many people. I won’t even begin to get into the complexities here, but will say it’s something I spend a lot of time pondering and hopefully even more time documenting in the months and years ahead.
Oh! Also, I will be showing a few images from the series, for the first time ever, on June 20th during a photography show at my studio… just need to figure out which ones, which is always the hard part for me.
-Clayton
2025 05 19
Midewin Tallgrass Prairie, Wilmington, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
A former wartime bunker in a former tallgrass prairie which is being redeveloped back into a tallgrass prairie.
-Clayton
2025 05 18
Joliet, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Nature attempts to foil man’s attempt at sanctuary. Don’t forget to pay the landscaping invoice.
-Clayton
2025 05 17
Rust belt remnants. Joliet, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
This used to be an iron mill. Now it’s a pile of rubble, but there’s a park alongside of it, so we’ll call it a win.
-Clayton
2025 05 13
Emily, keeping it 100 at See You Soon, Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Previously, I wrote about the origin of this “Keep it 100” portrait setup I’ve been doing, along with some of the challenges I faced. (See: 2025 03 24)
This will be a short update, of sorts. In the spirit of transparency (I like when people work through challenges publicly via social media and whatnot — even if, in reality, it’s more done as a marketing ploy), I thought it might be beneficial to some to see some actual numbers. In reality, it will mostly be beneficial to myself, as I struggle to figure out how financially viable it is to offer one-hundred unique portraits for one-hundred and fifty dollars.
Someone on Threads posted asking how people make a living from being portrait photographers. The one-word answer that came to mind, for me, was: hustle. That really kind of sums it all up. Finding willing participants is no easy task. Convincing people to come to you, money in hand, is hard. What keeps me going is the huge amount of very appreciative feedback I am getting from the sessions. Lots of people who otherwise hate getting their photo taken are really enjoying the process. Of course, there are endless intangibles that go into all of this beyond raw numbers, and at the end of the day, it’s myself and my decades of experience which is the real value.
February 2025: (19 sessions) $3,250 bookings; $625 tips & add-ons. $3,875 total over 9 days = $430/day.
Not terrible at a glance, and perhaps a sustainable way to make a career as a photographer, especially if you can keep your expenses down. In reality, the only way I’m able to do this setup is because I am pulling from gear accumulated over a decade by three different photographers. The upfront cost, wear & tear on the camera, and all of my time makes it hard to pin an exact number on what all of this costs, but if you were to go and rent all the necessary gear for the nine days, you’d likely spend over 100% of revenue on rentals alone.
Then, factor in the space needed to make it all work, and now we’re losing even more money. Not a sustainable business model.
My ideal, best case scenario for this specific setup is not to raise prices, but to figure out creative ways to make it make sense. I’ve been considering things like: making the entire setup go towards charity (not possible in my current financial situation); making a portion of each session go to charity; partnering with nonprofits and allowing participants to donate any number they deem appropriate; trying out a pay-what-you-want model.
What I’m trying to communicate is that the price of this offering is artificially low and should not be interpreted as what you might expect to get when you hand a photographer $150 in exchange for portraits. I’ve been trying to do things like asking for additional tips, high resolution, and/or retouched files in exchange for more money, in hopes that people might help “subsidize” the low price for others. Now, I have an entire new website (everyoneisfamous.com) dedicated to both showing the work and gaining more attention to the offering. Since launching, I’ve done one run of portraits, resulting in:
April 2025: (16 sessions) $2,500 bookings; $535 tips & add-ons. $3,035 over 7 days = $433/day.
One month is not a trend, but I will be interested in seeing if I can get the daily revenue number to at least double. Realistically, that’s the only way to make the setup start to make financial sense. This entire project is very much a time-consuming personal side project. Sure, a bit of extra money is nice, but in a way it’s likely doing more harm than good, considering I make my living as a commercial photographer with a perceived (and real!) value that is welllllll beyond “guy doing $150 headshots”. But I don’t care. I enjoy doing this and think there is some kind of longer-term solution that will make it make more sense/cents, both figuratively and literally.
On that note, I’m now booking sessions May 19-24! Tell yours friends! And tip! Or don’t, whatever.
-Clayton
PS - Emily bought one of my prints when she came by for portraits as well. Thanks Emily and shoutout intangible value
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
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
2025 04 12
Main Street on Chatsworth, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Another town without people, full of beauty.
-Clayton
2024 04 01
Birds on the line, tweeting or something. Somewhere in northern Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
After watching a few more episodes of the video I mentioned yesterday, it’s remarkable how efficiently word travels these days through social media. Ed was lining up free places to stay, free pints of beer, clothing, meals, while his poor old kayak buddy was left to fend for himself, without social media on his side. There’s some sort of lesson in there but I’m not exactly sure what it is.
-Clayton
2025 03 31
Illinois and Michigan Canal. Lockport, Illinois. June, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
It’s the final day of March, so we’re roughly a quarter of the way through the year already, which is quite wild. That news has me in rather poor spirits as, while I’ve been keeping myself very busy with my own endless list of projects, the meat and potatoes work that pays the bills has been slow and I’ve yet to win a proper large commercial production. This in itself is not out of the ordinary, however, I’m extra sensitive these days with the studio overhead piling every higher and the growing sense of an economic slowdown on the horizon.
The industry talk I lead last week was both remarkably reassuring to hear such kind words and compliments towards my photography, and terrifying in that most everyone else is dealing with today’s challenging economic realities. Ho hum.
On a brighter note, I stumbled upon the video below and it gave me a much-needed spark of joy. I love the weird journeys us humans become obsessed with and this is both entertaining and educational. My brain always wonders about and imagines what grand rivers are like at their place of origin and this video thoroughly explores the River Thames in all of its glory, which is cool.
As I find myself pivoting back towards becoming an artist and personality that relies on my own vision and content to survive, starting that long-pondered youtube channel really seems like it will be in my near future.
-Clayton
2025 03 17
Somewhere in northern Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Back from a gig down in St Louis and a few days of Ill Wandering (lots of time on the road — need to prioritize less driving next time) and I’m catching up on life, getting back into the routine of things. This week, I aim to make my new website go live. More on that soon. I’m also preparing for a talk going down in two weeks time in which myself and fellow photographer/friend Jason Little will discuss how we use personal work in our practice. I feel like lately all I do is personal work, so I should have much to discuss. I’ll aim to make it worthwhile for both those in attendance and myself.
-Clayton
PS - on the topic of photography, this video by Noah Kalina hit my feed today and I really enjoyed it. Give it a watch, if interested.
2025 03 16
Farm outside Ashkum, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
When I began my Illinois Project (photographing the state outside of Chicago), I was smitten by scenes like this. I still find this image beautiful, but a year later, I now realize a big part of what drew me towards these images was my lack of prior experience with them. Now that I have folders full of them, the charm sort of wears off a bit and you start to understand nobody has the patience to look at more than one of these photos, if even that. Maybe I’m wrong?
I’ve continued making these photos and will revisit them in time. Peeking back at this image now, made roughly a year ago, gives me the thought that maybe there is more charm in the simplicity than I’d previously thought.
One other result from my recent foray into capturing rural Illinois is that I now completely love bare trees, where previously my brain would almost totally ignore them. Nature’s fireworks, I like to think. Only they happen at such a slow pace that most humans will never comprehend their beauty.
-Clayton
2025 03 15
Freight train rolls through Ashkum, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
One thing that draws me to rural Illinois is the trains. I dream of living the life of a hobo and creating a large body of work from that perspective, but know I don’t have it in me to do so. The idea of living a far less comfortable lifestyle in pursuit of art is one that fascinates me, but I’ve grown too reliant on air conditioning and Amazon next day delivery.
Also, I need to photograph things out of focus more often…
-Clayton
2025 03 14
Pizza Palace. Ashkum, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
This photo is a visual representation of the Midwesterner’s saying “I’m living the dream.”
-Clayton
2025 03 13
North of Champaign, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
The big takeaway I had last year after my various Illinois Wandering sessions (which were admittedly not very focused and more of an afterthought) was that, while I was making some okay photos of cool scenes, none of the images really stood out as being strong enough to stand on their own. Sure, this image is beautiful (imo) and might work well in a series with other images providing meaning and backstory, but I’d been hoping to make work that would really stand out and be something I would be proud to show others. In reality, I was getting images that felt too pulled back and observational, like a tourist making snaps on the family vacation. I needed to be a part of the action. The images need to feel purposeful, powerful, and spark emotion. This shot is on the right track; it was made as a storm rolled over the plains, powerful to experience firsthand while being there in person, but a subject (a person, ideally) could’ve made it really stand on its own two feet as a strong image.
That’s the trouble with wandering around a rural state alone in your car — the amount of humans you encounter is remarkably small. I continually think of two possible solutions as I’m out on my own: The Crewdson Approach or the Soth Approach.
The obvious solution for a commercial photographer like myself, if wanting to make the strongest images possible, is to produce them like Crewdson does! Put a bunch of money into solving the problem. Get a van, fill it with people and props and a pre-planned road map and go make it happen. The challenge with this approach is that it’s not what drove me to explore my state in the first place. The resulting images may be “better” but any of the meaning I hope to create will be lost.
While it’s ultimately a far more challenging and time consuming approach, the honest, photojournalistic mentality is what’s been driving me to do this. I continually get the feeling while out exploring that I am in a place forgotten by the rest of the world, its time long passed. It’s wanting to document that feeling and emotion for a future audience that drives me to push through and continue exploring this approach to the work, while knowing full-well the strength of the images might suffer and the fine art galleries of New York City may never call.
My cast of characters should be the people who live and work in these places that I encounter, who understand and are at home in them. Pushing myself to get out of my comfort zone in order to access these photographic opportunities is the part that will be most challenging, but I am taking steps in that direction and so far it feels good.
-Clayton
2025 03 12
Somewhere in northern Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Everyone likes looking at photos of rural farmland, right??? Right?!
-Clayton
2025 03 11
Somewhere in Northern Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Catching up on posts as I’ve been on the road and didn’t have time to make them as I was busy shooting and wandering. It’s interesting looking back at these images from last March as I’ve made quite a lot of progress and changes to how I want to approach this project moving forward. More on that later!
-Clayton