The algorithm wants you shooting for likes, not for the sky
Last month I drove three hours to Anza-Borrego for a narrow window when the Milky Way core would be positioned just right over a specific ridgeline. Spent the whole night out there, came back with two frames I actually liked. Two. And then I sat in my truck on the drive home already thinking about how to crop one for a vertical post, what time to upload it, whether the engagement would justify the gas money.
That thought disgusted me a little. I didn't start doing this to optimize posting schedules. I started because the first time I saw the core with my own eyes in Joshua Tree, I couldn't believe what was up there. The camera came second. The sharing came way after that.
But growth matters if you want to sell prints or get commissioned work. I can't pretend it doesn't. So I'm stuck in this loop where I want more people to find the work, but the process of making that happen starts to colonize the quiet headspace I need to actually make the work in the first place. Astrophotography demands patience and presence. Checking metrics five minutes after posting is the opposite of both.
Have any of you found a way to stay visible without letting the visibility machine rewire how you think about your own creative process? Or did you eventually just decide the work matters more than the reach and let the numbers fall where they fall?
This really resonates with me. I think there’s a quiet freedom in letting the experience come first, the photograph second, and the sharing much later — if at all. I enjoy seeing how people respond to my work, of course, but I never want the numbers to decide what deserves my attention. Sometimes I simply look up, notice something, and take the photograph. For me, that still has to be the beginning.