tylerlastovich

I don't care about likes either. You don't get many likes on a stock photo site even if you are a pro anyway. I got into uploading simply to use them as a photo host, but later it became an outlet for the basic effort I put into being more creative with photography (learning LR). The logic many use is that it is better to upload photos than just have them collect dust. Besides, it is fun to be browsing the web and see pictures you have taken. The reach of Unsplash and other sites is really impressive. My pics are meh quality at best and yet they still have ~60M views. Real photographers have way more than that with one approaching 1B views.

A year in a hostel is impressive! In NZ it blew my mind how many people lived very happy lives yet almost never mentioned money, career trajectories, and to a large extent–the internet. I found this really refreshing as I had never been exposed to that kind of thinking before, the polar opposite of startup culture in the US. I specifically remember staying with a group of fruit pickers that were some of the happiest people I have ever met, even though none of them had more than a thousand dollars in the bank.

Sure, feel free to message me at tyler(at)lastovich.me.

I definitely get that. People post lifestyle pics to stock photo sites as the ultimate humblebrag; they get that little dopamine hit out of seeing others use their life on websites, posts, etc. I think that is a big reason why all the 'free for any use' websites get so many uploads. I find it much more rewarding than posting to social media.

I posted the picture on Unsplash, so yeah they are free to use it however they wish. I can see that a good amount of the pictures shown are taken from there. In a way sites like Unsplash make the problem they are describing worse. I have seen my travel pictures used on many different IG accounts, sometimes even as the profile pic.

Wow, they used a picture I took of my remote office for the 'Yeah My Job Lets Me Travel' section. I don't know if I feel good or bad about that...