Thanks for the ideas for blog posts: I’m going to start with them next week. I’m still taking more, so if you have anything to suggest, hop on over to my contact form. This week, however, it is Easter Sunday, so I thought I should do a themed post. Not that I’ve done one of those before: two years ago, Easter Sunday was April Fool’s Day, so my post was themed for that instead. And last year’s Easter Sunday was the first Sunday in over a year that I didn’t make a post on here, being near the start of my hiatus. But this year I wish you a Happy Easter, in the best way I know how: via the medium of stock photos.
The context for this post was that I was looking for an Easter stock photo for something else, and found a weird one, and wondered what others were out there. The site I use for stock photos is Pixabay; if you’ve read this blog before you’ve almost certainly seen one of their photos, as I use them whenever I have a post to make where I haven’t taken any relevant pictures myself. The main reason I use their photos rather than anyone else’s is that they are free, and this blog doesn’t make me any money.
This also means, however, that there isn’t much of a vetting process before pictures appear, as far as I can tell—not that that stops the big players in the stock photo game. But you get things like this, which was the first weird one I found:
(Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay)
This raises so many more questions than it answers, the main one being: “Is the Easter Bunny okay?” He just looks so sad, standing there (or is he walking? Unclear) against a dark horizon and an angry, brooding sky. What is he thinking? Why can he spread joy no more? How did he get transported to a desolate wasteland?
Sadly (though fortunately for this post) that wasn’t the weirdest one. Let’s look at a few more, shall we?
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Why… why have they put rabbit ears on dogs? Look at them, the poor things. What humiliation they have to endure for a stock photo. I’d suggest that maybe they’re benefiting in dog biscuits bought with the royalties, but, like I said: this is a free site. Anyway, I guess it’s kinda cute. They get weirder.
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Another pet photo. But I have concerns about the diet of this bunny. Rabbits have a vegan diet, I believe, and so I’m concerned about their welfare if they eat brightly-coloured eggs. Which, alright, are probably made of chocolate, but it’s unlikely to be vegan chocolate. And they’re a bit too big for the rabbit to get in its mouth. Risky decision you’re making there, Alexas-underscore-Fotos.
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This is… soup. Just some soup. Is there such a thing as Easter Soup? Maybe? I’m not sure. You definitely can’t say it’s Easter Soup by just putting some eggs around it, that’s for sure. Admittedly, it looks like rather nice soup. Would be more appetising if it hadn’t been put on the ground and surrounded by straw, but still: 10/10 would eat. Mm, soup. I should have soup when I’ve finished this. Soup. Anyway, moving on.
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So, this is a cage, in the shape of an egg, and mainly I’m just wondering what thought process led someone to make this. Is it supposed to be a comment on battery farming? Or a representation of a post-apocalyptic Easter? So many questions. So few answers. Such is the world of stock photography.
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Yep, that’s just a turkey inside an egg. With flowers emerging. And a marble pattern that looks a bit like a map of the mediterranean. With my GCSE in Biology I can say 100% that this is how birds are made. And also how tulips are made. Just visit one of the Amsterdam flower markets and you won’t be able to move without treading on eggshells. (They get annoyed when you do that, so you have to be really careful not to. Honestly, it’s like… the relevant analogy escapes me.)
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Oh God, oh God, oh God. Why. Why. Just why. I may never eat an egg again without dreaming of eating tiny round people. But, more to the point—what’s the connection to Easter here? I mean, I suppose bunny rabbits aren’t all that connected to the resurrection of Christ either, but this, surely, is connected even less.
This is getting disturbing, and I think I should stop. But before I do, I want to return to the question I posed earlier: “Is the Easter Bunny okay?” I found one last stock photo that I think answers it.
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Yeah, we don’t need a egg-shaped cage to represent a post-apocalyptic Easter. This will do just fine.
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