2024 09 02

Mr Peepers in the window. Chicago, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Life Update Monday. I figured it might be interested (to me, perhaps) to reply to my previous Life Update Monday (2024 07 08), as seen below in the bullet points.

• My commercial photography career continues along at unsustainable levels, causing me to continue to consider new career options (fine art photography? full-time motion directing? bar ownership?). Yes, I’m keeping quite busy on hospitality jobs and smaller projects, but the big budget jobs are less and less frequent. Something needs to change (I hope it’s more work!).

Fortunately, work has been very constant in the last two months. I’ve had two large commercial projects and a bunch of smaller stuff. I nearly booked a third even larger project, which would’ve made my year, but they ended up chosing the other photographer (it was down to the final two — I think my really thoughtful treatment helped almost win me the job…and writing here every day helped me with the treatment… etc, etc).

• The photo studio has been more stable (profitable, even!) lately, but I’m not yet optimistic this will consistently be the case moving forward (again, commercial projects have been way less frequent among photographers I know, myself included). I really love the studio space and want to make it work, but the amount of my time required just to get it breakeven is also not sustainable. Again, something needs to change (I hope it’s more work!).

I still love the space and it’s still a lot of work. It has also been continuing along at a busy pace. Last week was a nice example of what I’m aiming for the studio to be: I was out of town on work all week yet the space was busy with castings much of the week. Next week will also be a nice example of what I want the studio to be as there will be two great events happening! More on those below…

• While the big jobs are not going on, I spent the last week and a half diving deep into the world of portrait photography via my “Keep it 100” setups. I’m learning a lot and it’s actually been quite interesting, exciting even, to feel like I’m starting all over again and hustling for clients. Very much re-learning to appreciate every single dollar I earn through photography. Definitely planning to write more in depth about all this in the coming days.

I’m really looking forward to doing another round of “Keep it 100” portraits and have been scheming on other things I could do with it, like take it on the road perhaps. While in Pittsburgh a few days ago I kept an eye out for potential places I might be able to partner with for a limited run of dates. Need to think on this some more!

• I’d been planning to document both the RNC and DNC, however, stupidly had the wrong dates on my calendar and my one week of vacation in the Wisconsin Northwoods falls on the same dates as the RNC being held in Milwaukee, so I will likely miss most of all of it. Kind of annoyed about it but also really need to give myself some time off as I’ve been pushing myself way too hard lately. Still hoping to cover the DNC, which might be an absolute shit show. Politics are very depressing lately, but this might be one of the larger stories of our lifetime.

The political photo summer I’d been imagining never materialized. They have these things so locked down, though, it didn’t really have a chance from what my brain was imagining. We did, however, do a really fun DNC-adjacent event at the studio so I’m considering it a win.

• Had my first tarot card reading yesterday. It was surprisingly apt in its assessment.

Had my second tarot card reading two days ago! It, too, was a surprisingly accurate in its assessment. I realize there’s an angle to these things but I appreciate it gets you thinking about stuff you want to be thinking about.

• I started reading/doing The Artist’s Way after finally finishing the 640 page The Big Store, which was inspired by this previous post: 2024 03 29. I should do a book review or followup post.

Still working on The Artist’s Way and still keeping up with my morning pages most days (not all days, need to change that but have been too busy). Also, I did write a review of The Big Store (see: 2024 07 17)! Since then, I listened to the audiobook of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and have started the audiobook of The Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu which I am loving and wanted to do a review on Project Hail Mary, which I very much enjoyed the concept of (Wandering Earth is similar but maybe even better!).

• I booked my favorite musician (David Dondero) to play a show at the studio September 9th. Save the date! More info to come!

This show is happening a week from today! Monday, September 9th from 7-10pm at my See You Soon space. You should definitely come out, it will be a nice night!

• Now that this blog has been populated quite a lot, I’m getting rather annoyed at Squarespace’s rather minimal (bad) handling of blogs. This platform is not really designed for intensive writing or bulk posting. A search bar would be great! If only those had been invented.

Still annoyed with squarespace and they are not getting any better. I’m legit wondering if I should migrate the entire site elsewhere after a year.

• Can you tell I’m stressed about money these days? While that does suck, I’ve been quite high on life otherwise and feeling great about most everything else! Money stress is never fun but I continue to tell myself it’s just money and we’ll figure it out.

Still stressed about money but less so (working helps a lot, it turns out!). Also, the stress largely stems from how much we are spending on our wedding, which is now less than two weeks away! I’m leaning that anything wedding-related is expensive in large part because of the psychology of weddings. It’s only money, afterall, and the love of your partner and family and friends is far more important, so you tend to just let it all slide and plan to worry about it later.

This has been a Life Update Update. Thank you for being here.

-Clayton