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.

So I did.

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.

Turns out that number was 43,226.

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.