2024 11 03
Yesterday, Sunday, I took my day off so seriously that I forgot to post anything at all. I blame the Bears, who so demoralized me, I lost the will to do anything at all. Chicago sports is remarkable, really. Our teams experience occasional brilliant glory and then spend the next decade or two toiling away among the worst and most poorly-run organizations in all of sports. We’ll get ‘em next year, I’ll say again next year!
-Clayton
Another Mr Peepers. Chicago, Illinois. September, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Yesterday, Sunday, I took my day off so seriously that I forgot to post anything at all. I blame the Bears, who so demoralized me, I lost the will to do anything at all. Chicago sports is remarkable, really. Our teams experience occasional brilliant glory and then spend the next decade or two toiling away among the worst and most poorly-run organizations in all of sports. We’ll get ‘em next year, I’ll say again next year!
-Clayton
2024 09 02
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
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
2024 08 11
It’s Sunday. I’m recovering from Saturday. Another reminder that I’m too old to act like I’m still in my twenties if I want to be at all productive, which would be helpful as I have things to do. Important business things.
-Clayton
Another Mr. Peepers. Chicago, Illinois. July, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
It’s Sunday. I’m recovering from Saturday. Another reminder that I’m too old to act like I’m still in my twenties if I want to be at all productive, which would be helpful as I have things to do. Important business things.
-Clayton
2024 07 29
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
Yet another My 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 22
What are you looking at?
-Clayton
Mr Peepers (cat). Chicago, Illinois. May, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
What are you looking at?
-Clayton
2024 06 21
I need to find the time to make a photo zine called Mr Peepers with my photos of pets gazing out windows.
I need to find the time to make a photo zine called Fine, Art with my pocket cam Ricoh photos.
I need to find the time to find the time.
-Clayton
Cat (I think his name is Mr Peepers) in old house window. Chicago, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I need to find the time to make a photo zine called Mr Peepers with my photos of pets gazing out windows.
I need to find the time to make a photo zine called Fine, Art with my pocket cam Ricoh photos.
I need to find the time to find the time.
-Clayton
2024 06 10
It’s another Monday Life Update. Not too much to report on this week, which is fine. It’s a bit more healthy compared to my more frantic update last week, which even had my mom worried about my mental health. Sure, I still to have quite a lot on my mind, but perhaps it’s a bit more focused, namely:
We began production on a documentary film project. It’s still very early days and this project may or may not go anywhere (managing expectations), but we do have quite a lot of ideas on where to take it and we do now have one day of filming in the can, as they (used) to say. I still need to watch the footage and grade myself. Still learning new gear and how to record sound, etc.
Still planning this wedding. Have eleven tables set to arrive any minute now. Spent the weekend figuring out our registry list. It won’t end until September.
I picked up a Murakami book (After Dark) at a used sale while out getting coffee because a) I’ve been meaning to read more of him and b) I’m legitimately considering the idea of opening a bar, which he is a (perhaps weirdly) someone I reference in my brain whenever this idea pops up. The writing is good and reminds me that I need to read more print, as I’ve been doing Audiobooks almost exclusively lately, often while running.
Speaking of running: I had a crazy idea that I wanted to hit a marathon-length run before my September wedding date. Considering I am not in fantastic physical shape currently, this idea is quite unrealistic. I’ve scaled back my ambition to a half marathon.
I’m being reminded how time consuming and involved video post production is. This was literally my job after college and I strayed from it for this exact reason. I need to discover a healthy and balanced relationship between shooting, which I love, and editing, which I feel like I can only either obsessively dive into or completely shun. It’s a work in progress.
Lastly, this bar situation I’ve been subtly mentioning. Opening a bar has long been an idea which I’ve thought about. In my older years, the idea has faded as the realization of how much damn hard work it would be has taken hold. When you’re younger, you think of the upsides more than the darker realities. When you’re older, the time consumed doing the bullshit required tends to make you have second thoughts about everything.
What’s crazy, though, is that my industry is in a bit of turmoil lately and most people I talk to have been siding with the idea of opening a bar over the idea of being a photographer. I’d been thinking I was greedy to even have these thoughts, but the amount of people who share my views, and have encouraged them, has been quite eye opening. I feel like a longer post about the state of commercial photography is in order. It’s complicated and complex, but the overall vibe on the streets these days is not a healthy one and something needs to change.
-Clayton
Mr Peepers. Nashville, Tennessee. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
It’s another Monday Life Update. Not too much to report on this week, which is fine. It’s a bit more healthy compared to my more frantic update last week, which even had my mom worried about my mental health. Sure, I still to have quite a lot on my mind, but perhaps it’s a bit more focused, namely:
We began production on a documentary film project. It’s still very early days and this project may or may not go anywhere (managing expectations), but we do have quite a lot of ideas on where to take it and we do now have one day of filming in the can, as they (used) to say. I still need to watch the footage and grade myself. Still learning new gear and how to record sound, etc.
Still planning this wedding. Eleven tables are scheduled to be delivered any minute now. We spent the weekend figuring out our registry list. It won’t end until September.
I picked up a Murakami book (After Dark) at a used sale while out getting coffee because a) I’ve been meaning to read more of him and b) I’m legitimately considering the idea of opening a bar, which he is (perhaps weirdly) someone I reference in my brain whenever this idea pops up. The writing is good and reminds me that I need to read more print, as I’ve been doing Audiobooks almost exclusively lately, often while running. Plus I’d love to go to Japan but don’t see that happening in real life soon, so at least I can take a trip in my head.
Speaking of running: I had a crazy idea that I wanted to hit a marathon-length run before my September wedding date. Considering I am not in fantastic physical shape currently, this idea is quite unrealistic. I’ve scaled back my ambition to a half marathon.
I’m being reminded how time consuming and involved video post production is. This was literally my job after college and I strayed from it for this exact reason. I need to discover a healthy and balanced relationship between shooting, which I love, and editing, which I feel like I can only either obsessively dive into or completely shun. It’s a work-in-progress.
Lastly, this bar situation I’ve been subtly mentioning. Opening a bar has long been an idea which I’ve thought about. In my older years, the idea has faded as the realization of how much damn hard work it would be has taken hold. When you’re younger, you think of the upsides more than the darker realities. When you’re older, the time consumed doing the bullshit required tends to make you have second thoughts about everything.
What’s crazy, though, is that my industry is in a bit of turmoil lately and most people I talk to have been siding with the idea of opening a bar over the idea of being a photographer. I’d been thinking I was greedy to even have these thoughts, but the amount of people who share my views, and have encouraged them, has been quite eye opening. I feel like a longer post about the state of commercial photography is in order. It’s complicated and complex, but the overall vibe on the streets these days is not a healthy one and something needs to change.
-Clayton
2024 02 06
I used to have a therapist, now I have a daily blog.
-Clayton
Dog peeking out window (Mr. Peepers) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. November, 2023. © Clayton Hauck
I used to have a therapist, now I have a daily blog.
Also, I have a new series going with these window creatures I’m affectionately calling Mr. Peepers. You can peep it here: refrakt series window-creatures-mr-peepers
(more images in the series to be added soon!)
I really like the Refrakt site, so check it out if you’re not familiar; I’m behind on adding new images to my page, though, as I’m busy posting here every damn day. 😛
-Clayton
2024 01 12
Every once-in-a-while some art comes along into your life that makes you wonder: why isn’t everyone in the world obsessed with this? Oh yeah, it’s because you’re a genius and these mere mortals just don’t get it.
This Bug Club album is one of those things.
Again, discovered via the great Ezra Furman, thanks Ezra.
Enjoy!
-Clayton
Three neighbor dogs peeking out the window (aka Mr. Peepers). December, 2023. Chicago. © Clayton Hauck
Every once-in-a-while some art comes along into your life that makes you wonder: why isn’t everyone in the world obsessed with this? Oh yeah, it’s because you’re a genius and these mere mortals just don’t get it.
This Bug Club album is one of those things.
Again, discovered via the great Ezra Furman, thanks Ezra.
Enjoy!
-Clayton
2024 01 02
Still here! Keeping things brief is the key to longevity. Let’s not get too ambitious too soon, that’s how burnout happens.
I’ve always preferred horizontal images. Vertical images have a place, though. Like here on a mobile phone where you are definitely seeing this! Meow.
-Clayton
Cat in window (Mr. Peepers). November, 2023. Chicago. ©Clayton Hauck
Still here! Keeping things brief is the key to longevity. Let’s not get too ambitious too soon, that’s how burnout happens.
I’ve always preferred horizontal images. Vertical images have a place, though. Like here on a mobile phone where you are definitely seeing this! Meow.
-Clayton