Routes to a public images folder not firing - laravel

Question

I have the following route in laravel 5.2
Route::get('images/{filename}', function ($filename)
{
if($filename)
{
return redirect('/home');
}
});
If a person enters the following url: www.mydomain.com/images/image_abc123.jpg, I hope that it would be redirected to www.mydomain.com/home. But the route is not triggering and goes to show the image instead.
Any advise? Thank you!
Edit: here is my .htaccess the default of laravel 5.2 under /public directory
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
<IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
Options -MultiViews
</IfModule>
RewriteEngine On
# Redirect Trailing Slashes If Not A Folder...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]
# Handle Front Controller...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
# Handle Authorization Header
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} .
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
</IfModule>

Answer 1

This is probably because of your webserver. The common default is typically like this.
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
listen 443 ssl;
listen [::]:443 ssl;
server_name cards.foo *.cards.foo;
root /var/www/cards/public;
index index.php;
include php.conf;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
}
}
Notice the try_files directive. This is telling the webserver:
If the request is an extant file, open it.
If the request is an extant directory, index it.
Else, pass the directory as an argument to the /index.php.
So, on the first pass, "Does that file exist?", it says "yes" and bypasses PHP 100%. You will want to change that.

Answer 2

alright! public folder is named public for a reason!
to fix this you have to put those images in the storage folder (thats what the storage folder is if you ever wondered)
Storage/app
so they dont exist in public folder anymore and people can't reach them unless
you do this
Route::get('images/{filename}', function ($filename)
{
// get the image named $slug from storage and display it
// Something like (not sure)
$image = File::get('images/' . $filename . '.jpg');
return response()->make($image, 200, ['content-type' => 'image/jpg']);
});
what you want to achieve = preventing some or all people from accesing a file
what the answer does =prevents the files from being public unless you serve theme using a method
i hope everything is clear