People tend to follow other people, not posts. Just like anywhere, people tend to support other people. If the photographer doesn't add their personality to each post, it's true, the image just becomes another image in the sea of images. Same with art. If the art post is a simple Here's what I made, and then the art, it's hard to support that post if the one next to it is the art and something interesting to say or the art plus creative writing combo. If it's just a picture of a tree, I can't follow a tree. The moment they include their personality and talk about the experience, or anything, even rambling about their day, that makes the post unique and it's much easier to follow someone who seems interesting. I've been trying to explain that to a few folks for years.

but if someone started rewarded me 50 steem for every post? I'd turn around and give most of it away to people I thought deserved it as much or more than me.

Had I not powered up nearly everything I earned, I would not have been able to give this post, or anyone, the vote with value. Under this system, over the long term, if you give that Steem away now, you end up giving less than you could have if you powered up. If your posts suddenly dropped in value, and you gave away a lot of your earned STEEM, you've then created a situation where you cannot even pass around votes of higher value.