Back in 2018 I had a brilliant idea.  What if I threw a few photos up on Unsplash to see what, if any, traction they'd gain on a website that absolutely didn't need any more.  I don't quite recall what my end game was as I didn't have a website up at the time so it's not like I was farming for traffic.  Perhaps I simply wanted another feed for my digital dopamine drip.  Another honey jar to occasionally dip my finger in for some of that syrupy-sweet validation.

I fired up Adobe Lightroom, plucked three of my favorites from a smart collection aaaand... after a few weeks of unremarkable download metrics I grew bored of the experiment and impulsively moved on to my next ADHD-driven indulgence. Fin.

Whether engrossed in other creative pursuits or reeling from a global pandemic, those photos completely slipped from my mind. That is, until a few weeks ago when a friend sent me a link to a local charity 'fun-run,' likely hoping I'd participate so he wouldn't have to.  

It was a high quality site, commensurate with the Sisyphean task of convincing users to pay for the privilege of running on Hong Kong asphalt under the midday sun but it was the hero image peeking from behind the tagline that immediately halted my hamster wheel.

Yup... my Unsplash photo!   A sunrise skyline shot taken from the very asphalt on which the race was to be held.

My initial feeling was actually one of relief - viewing this as my 'contribution to the cause,' conveniently assuaging any irrational guilt for inevitably declining an event I was never formally invited to by organizers I've never met.

But once I came down from riding the tiny wave of pseudo moral victories I quickly paddled over to Unsplash to see how many other fun-runs I may have just indirectly brokered a exit strategy from.

Now, is this a backdoor flex? An indirect way to creatively showcase some work? Sure, but for all I know, these are modest numbers as Unsplash doesn't share stats. However, there's a big scab here I've really wanted to pick at for a while now, one that I was only ready to rip after becoming both culprit and cautionary case study.

It's the Faustian bargain suckers like me make when submitting to sites like this. Unsplash promotes itself as a vehicle for professional exposure through dissemination when it's transparently little more than another repackaged rat race to the bottom for what is, paradoxically, still the most worthless yet coveted currency in the world: likes.

With that said, it will likely come as no surprise that despite having an Unsplash profile page with my Instagram handle and email, after millions of views and tens of thousands of downloads: zero new followers, zero contacts.

It's not like exposure pays the bills anyway. I'm fortunate to not have to rely on it, but many photographers do. For them, sites like Unsplash fundamentally upend their economy, devaluing truly great photography by saturating the market with free, 'good enough' alternatives like mine.

And to be clear, we're not just talking about Mommy bloggers and charities hunting for heroes but Fortune 500 companies with marketing budgets that rival the GDP of small countries.

Case in point: A reverse image search revealed that everyone from major outlets like RT International, CoinDesk, Yahoo Finance, New Zealand Herald, London Evening Standard and Morningstar, to smaller operations like Tatler Asia, Harvard University, Lartisien, Thrillist, Forbes.cz, and TEFL.org have been but a few of the thousands free-feeding from the RyanMac photo bar. 

The irony? Had I not been a lazy web developer then, and provided a site like this to link back to, I might've at least had a few quality backlinks to show for my minor moral misgivings. 

Instead, I'm left contemplating the peculiar economics of giving away something I didn't realize had value and the guilt of my tiny contribution to a deleterious shift in an industry no amount of free photos can undo all from under the shadow of an AI tsunami that may have already rendered this diatribe academic. 

All just desserts for someone who was probably just in it for the honey.

A 6 year experiment with a moderately interesting yet wholly predictable ending.

Unsplash: A Cautionary Tale

Within a few weeks of management’s (wise) decision to entrust the marketing fate of one of the most anticipated product launches in company history to their versatile web developer, I was on a plane to Los Angeles. First steps were to help my colleague polish his storyboard and wrestle Valley traffic procuring all the gear we needed for the shoot—a one-day affair at a stunning Malibu canal house.

Our budget was as tight as the meticulously staggered call times for our talent, making ruthless efficiency not just a goal, but a near necessity. In the end however, I managed to navigate near-calamitous natural lighting conditions to get the shots we needed and I was quickly back on a plane with most of the edit wrapped before wheels touched in Hong Kong. 

My promise was a professional-quality video that showcased the pen’s accessibility and versatility, and I confidently delivered. All stakeholders agreed.

Entrusted with a major product launch, I delivered a professional-quality video under tight budget and time constraints, showcasing the product’s accessibility and versatility.

The 3Doodler Flow Video

From its inception, 3Doodler had largely relied on a WordPress stack to manage its array of web properties. However, as we grew, so did our e-commerce needs, and so around 2016 I convinced the team to dip its toes in Shopify's pond. Exciting as this transition was, it came with challenges. The largest was the number of active WordPress projects that would now require a Shopify retrofit, as tight launch deadlines made full Liquid rebuilds unfeasible.

This was one such project. Fortunately for me, Shopify had just released its JavaScript Buy SDK. Despite being buggy and sparsely documented—as libraries fresh out of beta tend to be—it ultimately provided what I needed to bring Faraz's sublime design to life (in PHP) while seamlessly integrating it into our nascent Shopify eco-system. This approach met all requirements while preserving not only my bandwidth but sanity by no longer having to toil with WooCommerce.

Transitioning 3Doodler to Shopify in 2016, I integrated the JavaScript Buy SDK to marry their WordPress stack and nascent Shopify eco-system.

The 3Doodler Pro Website

Time is rarely on your side in this game, but here it was looming over me like a piano tenuously hanging out a window. Fresh off a successful Kickstarter—and after months of internal deliberation—it was belatedly decided that our highly anticipated Sugar Pen would, in fact, need a dedicated digital home, and for a variety of reasons, wanted to move in yesterday.

By the time the final design was signed off on, my development runway was less than a week. So, over a long, caffeinated holiday weekend, I decided to bunker down and turn it around in full to ensure I had headroom for any revisions. To my wondrous surprise, few, if any, were needed.

With less than a week to develop our Sugar Pen's website following a successful Kickstarter, I worked over a holiday weekend to deliver a final product with minimal revisions.

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Unsplash: A Cautionary Tale

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