Yes .... but ... I've made a post this afternoon about the state of photography on this site. What I've observed is that the most earning, most voted, top posts in photography in many instances are some truly sh*tty pictures. So the whole follower thing is actually promoted very much here. Makes me sad :(
see my post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@divyne/first-rant-photography-on-steemit-photos-are-meant-to-be-looked-at
You are completely right about this. The most popular (or rich) people on this site have a huge following and they gain a massive amount of upvotes, no matter what quality (or lack thereof) they post. The only way you're going to consistently earn well here is to build yourself up a massive following aswell and that isn't easy. I do still stand behind my idea that 'follower for follower' does not help in this regard.
Example:
I could do the 'follow for follow' thing with many sports writers, but I don't care about sports at all, so though they now have me as a follower, I will not upvote any of their sports posts, because I don't care about them.
Trending and Hot can be very depressing pages to look at. I'm not sure what we can really do about it, other than stay true to ourselves and upvote content we really like.
The next update (Hardfork 19) might help a bit though, to even out rewards. We'll see how that works out in the coming month.
I just wish there was an easy way to find the good photographers and not the popular ones :) But hey I'm new I'll figure it out.
Yeah, I haven't found a great way for it yet, besides checking out the New feed (filter on Photography on the right by the way). You could also follow the people hosting photo contests, like @jamtaylor. You could check out his selection of winners to find a few good photographers.