2024 10 31
In the waning days of covid lockdowns, I drove out west for work. Afterwards, I connected with my sister and we headed to Sequoia National Park for a little exploration and visit with the famous General Sherman. It turned out to be a perspective-changing experience, as we arrived right at open and had the entire park to ourselves for hours! Standing alone among the world’s largest living creatives was an experience I will never forget and this image is one of the favorites I’ve ever made.
Lately I’ve been spending a bunch of time printing photos at the studio, so I was excited to release another limited edition on my ongoing series dubbed The Camera You Have. This image looks great printed and can be yours for free if you win my giveaway or if you simply purchase one via my online print shop. It’s a perfect time to get your holiday shopping started!
To enter, simply leave a comment on this post (make sure your email is accurate!) and/or like, comment, reshare the Instagram post on my @claytonhauck IG account. Good luck!
-Clayton
The Camera You Have #0015 “Human For Scale” General Sherman. Sequoia National Park, California. January, 2021. © Clayton Hauck
In the waning days of covid lockdowns, I drove out west for work. Afterwards, I connected with my sister and we headed to Sequoia National Park for a little exploration and visit with the famous General Sherman. It turned out to be a perspective-changing experience, as we arrived right at open and had the entire park to ourselves for hours! Standing alone among the world’s largest living creatives was an experience I will never forget and this image is one of the favorites I’ve ever made.
Lately I’ve been spending a bunch of time printing photos at the studio, so I was excited to release another limited edition on my ongoing series dubbed The Camera You Have. This image looks great printed and can be yours for free if you win my giveaway or if you simply purchase one via my online print shop. It’s a perfect time to get your holiday shopping started!
GIVEAWAY! To enter, simply leave a comment on this post (make sure your email is accurate!) and/or like, comment, reshare the Instagram post on my @claytonhauck IG account. Good luck!
-Clayton
2024 08 27
Caught a fish haul returning to dock while out scouting for our shoot. The boat set out at 3:30am and travelled seventy miles off shore. While this was a paid trip for tourists looking for a bit of deep-sea action, it was an interesting scene to encounter and got me thinking about how vastly complex our world is, and how typically these days most of our food ecosystem takes place behind the scenes and out of sight. We choose a number or place an order and minutes later, a hot fresh plate is waiting. I just had a chicken sandwich for dinner, and while seeing a few dozen dead fish on the dock is one thing, I can’t imagine what the equivalent scene would look like down the road at the chicken factory.
-Clayton
The end of the line for ole fishy. Ocean City, Maryland. August, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Caught a fish haul returning to dock while out scouting for our shoot. The boat set out at 3:30am and travelled seventy miles off shore. While this was a paid trip for tourists looking for a bit of deep-sea action, it was an interesting scene to encounter and got me thinking about how vastly complex our world is, and how typically these days most of our food ecosystem takes place behind the scenes and out of sight. We choose a number or place an order and minutes later, a hot fresh plate is waiting. I just had a chicken sandwich for dinner, and while seeing a few dozen dead fish on the dock is one thing, I can’t imagine what the equivalent scene would look like down the road at the chicken factory.
-Clayton
2024 04 28
If you read yesterday’s post, this is the scene we came across while walking home from bar dinner.
If you read Thursday’s post, this is me embracing using new photographic tools. I’ve written about it here before, but I’ve been loving the Lapse app in my iPhone. While I’ve been trying to use my phone less for image making (thus, carrying around a Ricoh everywhere I go), I do love the snapshot aesthetic this app provides, along with the date and time, which is a fun throwback to point and shoot film cameras. The only downside is the files you get from it are not very big. I imagine the app creators don’t want to host full-sized images on their servers to save money, but if you could pay for a “pro” version which allowed maximum resolution, I would totally give them my money.
For the first time in my pro photography career, I’m finding myself wanting more, new, different cameras! I just need to make sure I don’t revert back into the gear-head person who cared more about what equipment he had than the images being made from that equipment.
-Clayton
Spring flower pops up in an unexpected place. Chicago, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
If you read yesterday’s post, this is the scene we came across while walking home from bar dinner.
If you read Thursday’s post, this is me embracing using new photographic tools. I’ve written about it here before, but I’ve been loving the Lapse app in my iPhone. While I’ve been trying to use my phone less for image making (thus, carrying around a Ricoh everywhere I go), I do love the snapshot aesthetic this app provides, along with the date and time, which is a fun throwback to point and shoot film cameras. The only downside is the files you get from it are not very big. I imagine the app creators don’t want to host full-sized images on their servers to save money, but if you could pay for a “pro” version which allowed maximum resolution, I would totally give them my money.
For the first time in my pro photography career, I’m finding myself wanting more, new, different cameras! I just need to make sure I don’t revert back into the gear-head person who cared more about what equipment he had than the images being made from that equipment.
-Clayton
2024 04 06
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 over the years, sometimes with my pocket Ricoh camera, sometimes with an iPhone, thus the camera you have.
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!
“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 01 16
I came across this scene while walking home and snapped a few images with my Ricoh. It’s just a simple little scene but I love the odd tree, ambient night lighting and gritty noise from the high ISO.
THEN, a few months later, I again came across this scene and immediately thought back to this image I had made. Instead of making yet another image with my Ricoh, I pulled out the iPhone, opened a new app I’ve been using called Lapse, and snapped a few new images.
I must say: I’m a bit obsessed with this app. After getting over the initial data grab app-trickery bullshit that makes me want to throw my phone into a river, Lapse surprised me! The way they implemented the camera is fun and impressive; the angle being that your phone is a “disposable film camera” so you get the expected filter look, which is nice, but you also get a really well-blended strobe look from the camera flash (which is something I’d always fully avoided using on my phone camera even in the darkest environments). It reminds me of my old Yashica T3 film camera! Of course, it’s still digital and still a highly compromised phone image, but the convenience and social factors are hard to compete with. I got my Ricoh, which I keep in my pocket at all times, as a way to get away from using my phone camera out of convenience and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve recently made, however, this app might have me using my phone camera more than I’d like to because it’s just fun!
-Clayton (@claytonhauck on Lapse)
Night street scene in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. November, 2023. © Clayton Hauck
I came across this scene while walking home and snapped a few images with my Ricoh. It’s just a simple little scene but I love the odd tree, ambient night lighting and gritty noise from the high ISO.
THEN, a few months later, I again came across this scene and immediately thought back to this image I had made. Instead of making yet another image with my Ricoh, I pulled out the iPhone, opened a new app I’ve been using called Lapse, and snapped a few new images.
I must say: I’m a bit obsessed with this app. After getting over the initial data grab app-trickery bullshit that makes me want to throw my phone into a river, Lapse surprised me! The way they implemented the camera is fun and impressive; the concept being that your phone is a “disposable film camera” so you get the expected filter look, which is nice, but you also get a really well-blended strobe look from the camera flash (which is something I’d always fully avoided using on my phone camera even in the darkest environments). It reminds me of my old Yashica T3 film camera and the many years I spent shooting nightlife strobe photography. Of course, it’s still digital and still a highly compromised phone image, but the convenience and social factors are hard to compete with.
I bought my Ricoh, which I keep in my pocket at all times, as a way to get away from solely using my phone camera out of sheer convenience and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve recently made, however, this app might have me once again using my phone camera more than I’d like to.
-Clayton (@claytonhauck on Lapse)
Lapse app version of the above scene made a few weeks later than the original above. © Clayton Hauck