The Algorithm Was Never the Point

I'm going to say something that might sound a little sharp, but it's also just true: Facebook, Instagram, all of it — they aren't built to judge good work. They're built to keep you scrolling long enough to serve you an ad, and every decision their algorithm makes serves that goal, not the deeper value of what you actually made.

I say this as someone who has made images I genuinely believe in — images I look at and think, that is good, that is exactly what I was going for — post them, and watch them get a handful of likes and vanish into the feed within an hour. Meanwhile something far more forgettable gets pushed to thousands of people because it happened to hit whatever pattern the algorithm was rewarding that week. That's not a reliable measure of craft. It's a system optimized for something else entirely, and it was never built with fine art in mind.

Sun-Kissed Harmony Along Rustic Lines

Sun-Kissed Harmony Along Rustic Lines almost got left behind entirely. Tracey and I were just driving around a small area near Taos, New Mexico — no plan, no shot list, just seeing where the road went. We passed this little church without stopping. It wasn't until we were heading back that I remembered it, and by then the sun had dropped into exactly the right spot, flaring low behind the bell tower.

I pulled over on the road and grabbed it. No scouting, no waiting for the "right" conditions — just a memory of a building I'd glanced at an hour earlier and a light that happened to be perfect when I circled back. That's most of this work, honestly. Not always the planned shoot. Sometimes it's just paying enough attention on an aimless drive to remember what you saw the first time.

For a long time, that messed with my head more than I want to admit. It's hard not to internalize silence as a verdict — no likes, no comments, no shares, and some quiet voice starts whispering that maybe the image wasn't actually good, maybe you were wrong about it, maybe you should second-guess your own eye instead of trusting it. If you've felt that, you're not imagining it and you're not alone in it.

Here's where I've landed, though, and it took me longer than it should have to get here: an algorithm's opinion of my work is not the same thing as my work's actual worth. Those are two completely separate things that just happen to live on the same screen. A platform designed to keep people addicted to their phones was never going to be a fair judge of fine art photography — it's simply not capable of measuring what a photograph is actually doing, emotionally or artistically. Asking it to try is like asking a vending machine to appraise a painting.

So now, when I open my camera, when I sit down to edit, it's not for the feed. It's a release. It's the thing that lets whatever's built up inside me get out onto a screen instead of staying stuck where it can't go anywhere. That purpose doesn't need likes to be real. It was already real the moment I made the image, regardless of what happens after I hit post.

And here's the part I really want to land, if you're a photographer or any kind of creative person reading this and feeling invisible right now: keep making the thing anyway. Not because I'm promising you it'll eventually blow up, or that persistence guarantees an audience — I can't promise you any of that, and I'd be lying if I did. But I can tell you that the work itself, the actual act of creating, gives you something no algorithm can take away or grant you. If people like it, that's genuinely wonderful. If they don't, fuck 'em — someone out there will. And even if nobody ever does, you still made the thing you needed to make.

That's the whole point. That's always been the point. The algorithm was never invited to decide that for you, and you don't have to keep asking its permission.

Create because it's the outlet. Create because it's yours. Everything else is just noise.

Radiant Noise

I wanted to end this post with an image instead of just words, and this one felt right the moment I looked at it again. Shot with a Lensbaby in Goffs, California, it's controlled chaos — sharp where it needs to be, blurred where it doesn't, spines radiating outward in every direction at once. No clean composition, no obvious rule being followed. Just noise, rendered beautifully, because sometimes that's exactly what creating for yourself actually looks like — not tidy, not algorithm-friendly, just honestly yours.

Explore the infrared collection at Dream World Images, or read more from the Dreamer's Journal.

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