2025 04 02
Allison, wondering how long I will be looking at used photobooks. Powell’s Books. Chicago, Illinois. September, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Today is officially the day we started a photobook shop. Or, at least, committed to a popup to explore the idea of starting a photobook shop! You gotta pop it up first to gauge interest, learn, and grow into what will hopefully be a physical location one day. More on this soon, hopefully!
-Clayton
2025 03 29
Bridal shop. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Don’t tell anyone but I added that blurred out person using generative Ai. I snapped this image as I was driving by in my automobile and I kinda liked it… but it needed some mysterious human energy involved.
The recent release of GPT 4o or whatever it’s called has me moving up the expiration date for my job. If anyone is hiring a college dropout, please let me know!
-Clayton
2025 03 28
Craig, in the studio for a Keep it 100 session at See You Soon. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
My new website is now live! Give it a look, it’s called everyoneisfamous.com.
I’ll likely be spending a bit less time here as I get situated over there, but I won’t quit you, Pointing at Stuff dot com!
-Clayton
2025 03 26
The city at night. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Recently I was downtown for an event and afterward, I made an effort to wander a bit. The streets were eerily silent. I dipped into Billy Goat for a burger and a beer along with the three or four other humans (more staff than guests) who seemed to be out, for whatever reason, either running away or towards something.
A great idea then struck my brain: I would get a scooter and ride home like the wind. This led me astray in search of one when the big lights in the distance caught my eyes. “Hooter’s,” it said. Not yet having my fill of adventure, and recalling the news of the likely demise of yet another fine American establishment, I stepped in.
“Seat at the bar okay?” I asked the greeter (again, more staff than guests), and she motioned me inward. The wings came soon after and boy did I wonder why the joint wasn’t full of customers enjoying them. These things are delicious! I kicked myself for being too timid to frequent Hooter’s all my life for the wings alone.
I left as they were locking up. The man alone at the bar turned out to be an undercover security guard or manager, as I suspected (more staff than guests). I guess everyone gets their wings delivered to them from some other chain these days?
Across the street sat a fully charged scooter glowing in the darkness with my name on it. I rode like the wind just as I’d imagined I would, turning here and there into which ever dark street didn’t look familiar. This was an adventure and I had the city to myself. All the way home I rode and contemplated how cool it would be to start a scooter gang. Surely, this must be how the first gang was formed way back before the police cornered the market on gangs.
-Clayton
2025 03 25
Hawk? Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
I’ve been seeing this guy around the neighborhood lately.
-Clayton
2025 03 24
Mal, from a Keep it 100 session at See You Soon. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Becoming a Portrait Studio
by Clayton Hauck
The following thoughts were written in conjunction with an event happening later this week. Keeping The Lights On: An evening with photographers Clayton Hauck and Jason Little. They will discuss the importance of creative exploration within personal work and projects. You can rsvp for that event here.
Becoming a studio portrait photographer has been a humbling process and far more challenging than I anticipated. While, yes, I’ve been a professional photographer for two decades now, I’ve actively avoided pursuing portrait or headshot clients. Previously, I didn’t have the studio space and for that reason alone it never made much sense. Dedicated space aside, the economics of portrait photography is challenging, especially in today’s market, where everyone is either a photographer themselves or knows a skilled photographer.
All this said, I became obsessed with a setup artist Jeremy Cowart was offering and sharing via his Instagram. He now calls it The Portrait Lab and has built an entire business around the concept in his hometown of Franklin, Tennessee, outside of Nashville. The methods that caught my attention were his use of a projector to change the background throughout the shoot (he’s now using a fancy LED wall), along with varied lighting schemes which cycle through as you shoot. Basically, I loved the idea of creating a more organic and random situation inside of a controlled studio setting. It would blend a bit of my own candid photographic style into a more traditional portrait approach and I had to try it for myself.
Days of internet sleuthing and rabbit holes eventually led me to the setup I now use (though I prioritize tweaks and trying new things each time I set it up). Jeremy is quite open about his process and has laid much of it out in various industry talks you can find online. For me, the biggest hurdle was not figuring out how to technically do it, but the decision to blatantly steal the idea of another artist. It’s one I still struggle with, while doing everything I can to make the setup my own in the process. For example, he embraced Ai while I shunned it and made Anti-Artificial Intelligence the core focal point of my process.
The name “Keep it 100” came to me while editing photos late one night in the studio. Chicago’s now mayor Brandon Johnson was doing a campaign event, dropped the line in conversation, and it just sort of clicked. I could offer people one-hundred unique photos for one-hundred dollars in one-hundred seconds, all while shunning Ai and providing people with real-life images in a style that is hard to believe isn’t artificial. It would showcase the power that photography can still wield in a world where technological advancements are eroding our standards towards what we believe is real.
THE NEXT BIG THING IN PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY
The first few test shoots I did were so fun that I was completely convinced this thing was going to be huge. In my head, I was envisioning renting spaces to open additional studios while completely customizing the experience to whatever the subjects wanted. Different colors, backdrops, lighting vibes, propping, wardrobe, etc. It would be like a professional wedding photo booth on steroids and there would be lines out the door, I thought! This thing was going to be so big I could pivot my career and open up locations offering these quick and exciting portrait sessions all over the country! Like a photo-obsessed Ray Krok, I was already perfecting the operational flow as guests moved through the setup.
Then I started offering sessions — for free — to my friends and Instagram followers. That’s when the challenging reality of the situation began to set in. While I’d been thinking this thing would quite literally sell itself and get instantly booked solid whenever I made openings available, the exact opposite thing happened. Nobody cared. It was hard to get people to come by and park themselves in front of my camera, even for the low price of freeeeee!
Quickly, I learned that convincing people to come to you and give you any amount of money is no easy task, even when you’re offering what you consider to be the world’s best portrait deal. Communicating your ideas are even more important than executing them. That was the takeaway, and it was demoralizing and almost made me give up; it’s what I’m still working on well over a year later.
SALES > SKILLS
This is the grim reality that artists like myself never want to believe is true. We like to think that good work will rise to the top and get an audience naturally. That people will come flocking to us for our skills alone. That if we only buckle down and focus on producing the best work, everything else will fall into place naturally. At the same time, we love to complain about how so-and-so is terrible and it’s dumbfounding that they got signed by a rep and are working on huge productions all of the time. We focus on the negatives and make excuses that don’t help us in any way. I’m amazed by how often I catch myself remembering that not everyone else already knows and thinks the same things I do.
The portrait setup, for me, was a great refresher in starting out as a photographer — this shit is hard!
While things started very slow, they did eventually pick up, hardly thanks to my own doing. I stumbled along, offering portrait openings every few months as my schedule allowed, but bookings were light even at my $100 price point. Fortunately, my studio has also allowed me to expand my social network as I’m meeting lots of people through the various events that we host. This is when I learned the value of influencers (another thing we photographers love to scoff at!).
Dennis Lee is a super talented guy (you can find him at Food is Stupid and The Party Cut). He booked a $100 session and loved the results so much that he wrote about it on his popular newsletter, while also telling me I was insane for making it so cheap, which helped me to raise my prices. This was just the bump I needed. Both a social proof-of-concept and a shot of much-needed confidence for myself, the next session found itself a ton more bookings, largely thanks to Dennis, and also because I’d kept at it through the awkward period when things weren’t working out as I thought they were going to.
After the Influencer Bump, I embraced the word-of-mouth method and began to focus on shaping an email list to help promote the offering (something I should have been doing from day one). I woke up one Monday last fall and decided to drop another run of dates the following week. Within hours, I had a dozen bookings already lined up. This was the moment I realized I was on to something with some real potential.
LETS TALK NUMBERS
Earlier I mentioned stealing Jeremy’s idea as being difficult for me. It still is. Another challenge is the super low price point. As a commercial photographer, I’m used to being “too expensive” for clients on a regular basis. We have high standards and we are pretty tough about sticking to them, so me coming out and offering dirt cheap portrait sessions both goes against my own standards and does a disservice to other portrait photographers who make a living doing this work, which is another thing I’m very sensitive to.
So why do I do it?
This answer is complicated and, admittedly, still evolving. My immediate response is that it’s a tough market and the only easy way to get regular bookings is to offer a deal so good that people can’t resist. But this doesn’t justify undercutting your colleagues. My current working justification is that this is a trade. While, yes, I’m giving people wildly affordable portraits (my pricing has since risen to $150, with various add-ons also available to help make it more lucrative for me), I’m also doing it on my own terms. In a sense, these cheap sessions are paid test shoots for me. I’m using whatever backgrounds and lighting schemes I want to try out and learn from, while keeping each session very short (ten minutes or less, usually) so that I can squeeze in a bunch each day. This helps make the math work better without compromising the results — people are still getting an incredible value and the low price point makes me feel good, in a way, that I am providing a “high end” service for an accessible fee. It’s important to me that I’m able to cater towards faces and personalities that otherwise would not show up if I was charging, say, $600 a session (a price that is far more representative of my time and the equipment involved in making all of this happen).
All that said, when my agent tells me I “look desperate” and am ruining my reputation, I don’t fully disagree with her. This industry runs on perception, and the guy doing cheap headshots, or shooting weddings, or events, can’t be trusted to handle a McDonald’s production the following week. Love it or not, that’s how things work.
Her solution is for me to raise my prices significantly. My solution is to drop them and make the whole thing an art project. My end goal is to make Keep it 100 run as a project that primarily raises money for charity, while working with sponsors and finding other creative solutions to fund it and make money for myself. While the vision is still formulating in my brain (and is very much inspired by another friend and Keep it 100 backer, John Carruthers), and I have a lot of work left to do, it’s this goal which is driving me forward and keeping me most excited about the project.
IN CONCLUSION
Trust me, I hate talking about this stuff. I’d much rather be at the studio shooting new sessions right now and letting things play out organically. But I’m also learning that it’s important, both for marketing purposes (yuck) and my own sanity, to dedicate time towards processing everything and talking about it. Without stopping to digest what you are doing and why it is either working or not working, you risk driving yourself mad in the process or missing potentially simple solutions which allow your idea the space it needs to grow into what you know it has the potential to be.
I’m excited to share the next phase of this endevour, which is largely me getting back to my roots, in the coming days.
-Clayton
Thanks for reading and if you want to hear more about this, the next phase of Keep it 100, and various other personal projects I’ve been working on, stop by my studio this Thursday for the APA Chicago event. Click here to book a session or sign up for the Keep it 100 email alert list and get some fun new photos of your own!
2025 03 23
Jack and I enjoyed one too many adult beverages. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Jack and I might be cooking something new up. This year is shaping up to be a transformative one for me in many ways. More soon.
Also, Jack has a new photobook out that is great and you should check it out and buy a copy. We might be able to help you with that soon.
-Clayton
2025 03 22
Armitage Avenue, in need of some new shops. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025 © Clayton Hauck
Why I’m such a sucker for tiny shops like this one, I don’t fully understand. But this lil spot is so cute that I’ve been dreaming of putting a business inside of it for more years than I can remember. One day, perhaps.
-Clayton
2025 03 21
Good Boy wants to go outside. EZ Inn, Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Open yourself up to chance.
Today I walked to work, as I usually do, and I took a different path than usual, as I always try but usually fail to do. As a reward, I ran into a friend and got to hear about her trip to Europe. I then encountered some animals and made a few photos of scenes I encountered.
Then, as I ate my lunch at the studio, this Alec Soth video (below) played.
Open yourself up to chance as often as you can and rewards will follow.
-Clayton
2025 03 20
Cone in snow. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Please pardon the dust as I spend my time building yet another new website and prep for a photo talk going down next Thursday, in which I will debut said website.
-Clayton
2025 03 09
Sunset on Bloomington. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Chicago’s weather today was glorious. The first nice weekend day where everyone leaves the house and it makes the city feel alive with energy and humanity. It’s days like these that make me glad to live where I do.
-Clayton
2025 03 08
(Hidden) Busted Car. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
While out celebrating my birthday yesterday, I realized that my driver’s license had expired that day. Needing to drive to St Louis for a photo assignment in a few days, I was worried that getting this renewed in time would not be possible (also considering the state had determined I needed to pass a written test to do so). Fortunately, I spent Saturday afternoon at the DMV and made it happen after an hour or so of sitting in the waiting room listening to numbers being called.
Afterwards, we celebrated with pizza at Barnaby’s up in Northbrook, which has been on our list of spots to check out. The pizza was great and the place was wildly crowded with families enjoying an early Saturday night pizza dinner. As we ate, numbers were called out continuously as orders were ready, which made the whole experience feel appropriate post DMV.
-Clayton
2025 03 06
John aka Crust Fund making another pizza during a fundraiser event at my See You Soon space. Chicago, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I’m wildly proud of the things I’ve been able to do at my studio space. That said, I often forget all of the things that have happened here. It’s easy to look at an empty calendar and get sad about how slow or hard things are. Two thoughts on this:
Having just completed my taxes (I secretly like doing them because it’s a nice reminder of all the things you did the previous year), I was left impressed by how busy the studio kept me in a year that I’d kind of summed up as being a bad year (business-wise).
I’m (forcing myself to) finally get a regular newsletter going. We’ll start with the studio, which should go out every month, and eventually (soon) I’ll get one going for my own “personal brand” which will be focused solely on my photography work. I’ve long shunned this habit because: it’s boring and I don’t want to do it; they just get trashed and hardly anyone sees them; I dislike talking about myself (contrary to what this blog may lead you to believe!). That said, it finally hit me that there’s just as much benefit to my own personal mental health in the practice as there is potential benefits from a marketing perspective, and that’s huge!
Set aside some time to look back and reflect on all the amazing things you’ve accomplished and it will likely help bring a smile to your face.
Then, if you don’t tell anyone about all the cool things you’ve done, did they actually happen?
-Clayton
2025 03 04
What’s going on out there? Chicago, Illinois. December, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
We live in wild times. It’s depressing and I’ve made the calculated decision to mostly ignore it, to the best of my abilities, and focus on myself and my work. I’m not certain it will be possible to ignore it much longer at the pace we are moving, but in my experience, engaging does more harm to my mental health than good. Lots of people I know agree with this approach and are attempting to practice it themselves. This also scares me.
Staring at the television this morning in an effort to pay some attention and it leaves me thinking we are swiftly heading for a recession. This thought is a difficult one in that I will likely need to completely rework my own professional career: lose the studio to cut overhead, get a side job, lower my rates, etc, etc. Everything is on the table. It almost feels like the powers that be know this reality and it’s precisely why they are taking the actions they are taking. The bums lost, Lebowski.
Until that day comes we will keep calm and carry on. Good luck, everyone. I’m turning the tv off.
-Clayton
2025 03 03
Night house. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
In the dead of the night, I was awoken and caught a glimpse of what my brain was working on while sleeping. It’s always remarkable to me how busy our brains seem to be while sound asleep. Maybe this isn’t always the case, but it seemed as though mine was working in overdrive. It felt like my brain was rewiring itself, shifting its focus entirely towards video production. I had all sorts of videos playing out, filled with specific concepts, shot ideas, lighting schemes, transitions, edits, experimental techniques, graphics, etc. It was both exciting and daunting, waking up to realize the ideas exist in there but to actualize them will require focus, dedication, and time. That’s the main hurdle that has kept me away from video for a decade now.
I think watching the Oscars and seeing best director Sean Baker’s enthusiastic acceptance speech shamed my subconscious into attempting to make up for a decade of neglecting the artistic passion (filmmaking) that got me started on this journey I am currently on. The challenge will be avoiding decision fatigue and over-analysis, resulting in nothing being accomplished at all. There are a hundred ideas floating around in my brain, which is exciting, but spending each day thinking about them all — dreaming of them — while not doing anything about it will only give me a blog full of mediocre posts that few people see and not much else to show for it.
Enough dreaming. Time to create.
-Clayton
2025 03 01
Yoder and some fine wine. Chicago, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
We’re doin’ movie night at the studio tonight, which I’ve dubbed Cinema 606 (shoutout Katie!), and I’m very excited about it. I’m on cocktail duty, as always, and Allison is making her amazing tavern pizzas (shoutout John!) and some other tasty stuff. It’s amazing having the space to do stuff like this, and I have no shortage of ideas on other things to do both inside and outside the space…but of course, time. Time is always the constraint. So much so that I find myself overwhelmed with thoughts and ideas to the point that I end up stalling and getting nowhere.
I used a photo of Kenneth today because he’s someone who suffers from the same condition. We should probably start a podcast about it. That’s the answer!
-Clayton
2025 02 28
Bird of prey. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Sometimes you walk to get tacos and on your way back to the studio see a hawk in the tree and snap a bunch of photos of it, then get back to the studio, eat the tacos, do some emails, open up the Lapse app to see the photos have developed and download one to post on your blog that probably nobody will ever see. Shit, looks like it back-focused. We’ll get him next time. Tacos were solid, at least.
-Clayton
2025 02 27
Mister Tom Musick performs at Weegee’s. Chicago, Illinois. January, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Last night I was out too late and drank a few too many beers. The long and the short of it is that I think we’re giving the photobook shop a go. Or, at least the concept of what will hopefully become a physical space at some point down the line. More to come.
-Clayton