2025 04 22

A building filled with dreams? Off the Belt Line in Atlanta, Georgia. May, 2024 © Clayton Hauck

Two thoughts today:

First. Commercial photography is in a funk. It’s easy to be pessimistic (guilty!), but it’s also constructive to take a step back and think things through. Last year, it wasn’t until May that I had my first large production, and the year turned out to be (not amazing, not terrible) solid. The overhead I carry as a studio owner is something that has made me far more sensitive to any gaps in revenue, which is something I am still fairly new to and learning to better navigate.

On the topic of being a studio owner, this building in Atlanta was one that I stumbled upon one afternoon while exploring the Belt Line. It reminded me of my building back home (The Kimball Arts Center) which is just off our version of Atlanta’s Belt Line, The 606 Trail. Immediately, my brain began to contemplate what I could do in the space. Perhaps a See You Soon Atlanta might be a fun endeavor, I thought!

Realistically, the studio business is a challenging one, and I’m struggling just to stay afloat inside the one location I do have, so opening another seven hundred miles from home is maybe not such a great idea. But this is how my brain works. I get excited about big ideas. They motivate me.

It was Chicago’s Daniel Burnham who famously said:

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us.

These days, “popping up” is the safe path towards pursuing a big idea. This new Big Idea exists in my brain and resides inside of another building off Chicago’s 606, however, I learned my lesson by going big the last time. This time, we’ll pop up and start small. If there’s demand, the big idea may follow. Time will tell, and I’ll get more into this another day, but it’s something that is keeping me motivated to push onward and forge ahead into the dark unknown.

-Clayton