It's not ridiculous, it's a security measure for your own protection. The phone does not know who's trying to access it - what if it was your boyfriend trying to read your text messages and trying to guess your pattern? This should drive home the importance of creating a PIN/password or pattern that you can remember (or writing it down/drawing it somewhere) and the importance of making sure important stuff is backed up in case of phone disaster.
If you had Google backup on, the photos should repopulate your phone. This is not usually immediate, it can take a couple of hours or even overnight when the sync occurs. Samsung does not save the photos in the backup, they leave that to Google.
