2025 03 17

Somewhere in northern Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Back from a gig down in St Louis and a few days of Ill Wandering (lots of time on the road — need to prioritize less driving next time) and I’m catching up on life, getting back into the routine of things. This week, I aim to make my new website go live. More on that soon. I’m also preparing for a talk going down in two weeks time in which myself and fellow photographer/friend Jason Little will discuss how we use personal work in our practice. I feel like lately all I do is personal work, so I should have much to discuss. I’ll aim to make it worthwhile for both those in attendance and myself.

-Clayton

PS - on the topic of photography, this video by Noah Kalina hit my feed today and I really enjoyed it. Give it a watch, if interested.

2025 03 13

North of Champaign, Illinois. April, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

The big takeaway I had last year after my various Illinois Wandering sessions (which were admittedly not very focused and more of an afterthought) was that, while I was making some okay photos of cool scenes, none of the images really stood out as being strong enough to stand on their own. Sure, this image is beautiful (imo) and might work well in a series with other images providing meaning and backstory, but I’d been hoping to make work that would really stand out and be something I would be proud to show others. In reality, I was getting images that felt too pulled back and observational, like a tourist making snaps on the family vacation. I needed to be a part of the action. The images need to feel purposeful, powerful, and spark emotion. This shot is on the right track; it was made as a storm rolled over the plains, powerful to experience firsthand while being there in person, but a subject (a person, ideally) could’ve made it really stand on its own two feet as a strong image.

That’s the trouble with wandering around a rural state alone in your car — the amount of humans you encounter is remarkably small. I continually think of two possible solutions as I’m out on my own: The Crewdson Approach or the Soth Approach.

The obvious solution for a commercial photographer like myself, if wanting to make the strongest images possible, is to produce them like Crewdson does! Put a bunch of money into solving the problem. Get a van, fill it with people and props and a pre-planned road map and go make it happen. The challenge with this approach is that it’s not what drove me to explore my state in the first place. The resulting images may be “better” but any of the meaning I hope to create will be lost.

While it’s ultimately a far more challenging and time consuming approach, the honest, photojournalistic mentality is what’s been driving me to do this. I continually get the feeling while out exploring that I am in a place forgotten by the rest of the world, its time long passed. It’s wanting to document that feeling and emotion for a future audience that drives me to push through and continue exploring this approach to the work, while knowing full-well the strength of the images might suffer and the fine art galleries of New York City may never call.

My cast of characters should be the people who live and work in these places that I encounter, who understand and are at home in them. Pushing myself to get out of my comfort zone in order to access these photographic opportunities is the part that will be most challenging, but I am taking steps in that direction and so far it feels good.

-Clayton

2025 03 12

Somewhere in northern Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Everyone likes looking at photos of rural farmland, right??? Right?!

-Clayton

2025 03 11

Somewhere in Northern Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Catching up on posts as I’ve been on the road and didn’t have time to make them as I was busy shooting and wandering. It’s interesting looking back at these images from last March as I’ve made quite a lot of progress and changes to how I want to approach this project moving forward. More on that later!

-Clayton

2025 03 10

Somewhere in northern Illinois. March, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

This week I’ll be doing some Ill Wandering while traveling to and from an assignment down in St Louis. I don’t have much planned out, but am excited to explore and document regions further south in the state. In additional to making photos, the goal is to also do some video and short interviews with strangers as well. This is part of yet another project I am working on, which I will talk more about soon.

-Clayton

2025 02 13

Moving things; ill wandering; somewhere outside Streator, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

I’m going to sound like a boomer for a moment but I must say, I will never take for granted the sheer amount of things that happen, out of sight, in order to enable our lives to be smooth and easy. Easy is a very relative term, but that’s not my point. While it may feel like the world is rapidly spinning out of control at the moment, it is perhaps helpful to consider things could be far, far worse. It helps me, at least. A chicken in every pot.

-Clayton

2025 02 04

Somewhere outside Woodstock, Illinois. December, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

I can’t wait to get on the road again. Excited to see what Illinois (Ill) Wandering brings me this year, if I can find the time to get to it.

-Clayton

2025 01 15

Lone tree. Somewhere outside Woodstock, Illinois. December, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Yesterday, some events went down that were quite eye opening for me. At this point, it’s rather well known how dangerous social media can be for our psychology, but that doesn’t stop most of us from using it all day, every day. I had a friend hit what I’d call rock bottom (he will disagree, of course), and it gave me some newfound urgency towards keeping better track of my own social media habits and usage.

There’s a link to an article below by Kyla Scanlon, which I also happened to read the same morning, which is quite brilliant and the the closest thing to required reading that I can think of in these wild times. While I somewhat disagree with Kyla on the point of TikTok specifically (I am in favor of a full ban without Chinese reciprocity), she is incredibly poignant in her thoughts and views on this countries’ use of social media broadly.

“The problem is that it’s an addiction. We are addicted to being informed, which makes complete sense, because we are little animals. If the rabbit could know exactly what danger it could or will face, it would be all over RabbitTok. Our little brains love knowing exactly what is up, and we love being nosy. These platforms haven't created these desires - they've just monetized them with unprecedented efficiency. But it’s making us inhumane.”

I read that passage and was like, yeah, she got me. She got us.

I highly urge you to check out her article here. And to limit your social media usage. Blogs are so much cooler, after all.

-Clayton

2025 01 03

The dust adds visual interest. Somewhere between Streator and Pontiac, Illinois. November, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

This camera is so far gone but I continue to use it nonetheless. I tell myself I like the look the layer of dust is giving me. Honestly, I kind of do. Each time I go to buy a new one, they are not available. Everyone loves the Ricoh, apparently. Plus, spending a thousand bucks doesn’t sound very appealing right now. It’s probably time to attempt a surgery and see if I can’t remove some of this madness. If I fuck it up in the process, maybe it’ll get me to shoot more film again!

While researching the photographer Weegee (for no reason whatsoever!), I learned that he did a bunch of work with prisms later in his career. Interestingly, he did a series of images of Marilyn Monroe where her face is all distorted but you can still tell it’s her. It’s the kind of thing you might find profound in high school art class.

This is why I think I’m making groundbreaking work here with my Dirty-Sensor Ricoh. It’s profound and amazing. Maybe I will start to sell cameras that have dirty sensors to high school photography students!

Oh yeah, the creative resolution post is still in the works. Will get to it, eventually. Probably.

-Clayton

2025 01 01

Coming or going? Somewhere south of Rockford, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck

Becoming a Daily Blogger in 2025

Today marks the successful completion of a full year of daily blogging!

Five days. Five, damn, days. At the time, I didn’t care that I missed posting to this here blog for five days because I was busy getting married. That clearly takes priority to casual blog posting, which goes almost completely unnoticed. Now, looking back from the comfort of a new calendar year, I see it as a failure of my objective! Perhaps because I live in the United States and we tend to see things as all or nothing. Perhaps because I don’t have my priorities in order. Perhaps because my standards are so high I consider it a complete failure to only get 98.6% of the way towards reaching my goal. Whatever the reason, when I noticed this five day gap (I’d completely forgotten about it because, you know, it doesn’t really matter) I was furious with myself. Why hadn’t I anticipated and pre-loaded blog posts? Should I now “punish” myself, start the timer over, and do it all over again this year?

Let’s be honest, I probably don’t need to be sharing any old thought I have on the internet anymore. That said, I’ve made it clear from day one that the entire point of this here blog is for me, myself, and I. I’m doing this to improve my own writing skills, photo editing skills, and to think through various subjects. The fact that I am doing it publicly is a byproduct and not the main motivator, but it’s also a way to keep me honest and put pressure on myself to continue to show up. It’s how my brain works. 

As an example, I was doing my “morning pages” quite regularly for months after reading The Artist’s Way. This was super helpful, however, as soon as I got busy with other shit (like getting married) I completely cut out this habit without even realizing I had done so. In a way, this here blog is my own version of the morning pages. It’s my version of therapy and it gives me a chance to think. Hopefully it does more good than harm when it comes to my reputation and people reading my business! 

One quick story about a proud moment that justified the time I’ve dedicated to this here blog: I lost a big job we bid on this fall. We lost it, but we almost won it! This may sound insane but I was almost as happy by how close we came to being awarded the project as I would’ve been had we actually been awarded the project. If you’re in the biz, you know about these calls you have with the client and/or agency leading up to bidding on a big project. On this specific call, it became very apparent to me that we had no realistic shot at winning this bid (for a number of reasons, but an obvious one was that all the examples they showed us were images they glowingly described as exactly what they wanted to capture — they were all made by another photographer, whom they’d just worked with, who was also bidding on the project!). My takeaway from the call was that if we had any shot at getting the job, I needed to write a really good treatment.

Either the treatment worked or things changed beyond our control because we got the call that we were favorites for the job. It was all but guaranteed! Then, as happens, things changed again and we didn’t get the job. But I took it as a nice consolation prize and largely credited my habit of writing regularly with being the thing that put us over the top. 

Most likely, in the new year I will tweak my approach a bit. My main priority is to continue the writing. Whatever approach best enables me to do this is how I will go about it. Again, there are days when I simply don’t have the time to jot down something worth reading, and those days probably don’t need a post. Maybe I’ll make it a “photo a day” situation so I can more easily fulfill my lifelong dream of posting to a blog every day for a year (sarcasm?), while keeping the words to days when I do have something more meaningful to share. We’ll see.

Thinking bigger, I often say you need to go to where the people are if you want to see noticeable success, and the people are not hanging out on blogs. If I really wanted to take this project to the next level, a YouTube channel would be the obvious next step. Learning to communicate in video form, versus textually, is a skill that will take you places in this day and age. The reality, however, is that I likely only have the time for a more casual blog, like this here one, that exists mostly as a space for personal growth and exploration. Regardless, I appreciate you being here!

Happy New Year!

-Clayton

This is one entry in a multi-part series of self-exploration and contemplation-out-loud in advance of the new calendar year. Some of this may happen; none of this may happen.
For the complete list of posts, see 2024 12 25.