While scrolling through this post, you are very likely to start wondering in what kind of context someone would need a stock image of a man with a meatloaf mask blended into his skin, or a shot of a woman pointing a baguette at a chef in what seems to be a carefully staged... bakery robbery.

It all has to do with the demand for very specialized imagery which happens when a subscriber browses through the peculiar stock archive. But the photographers have to already be ahead of the demand and anticipate people’s imagery needs before they start typing in the keywords.

According to The Atlantic, “Shutterstock's content team will do direct outreach to the site's top videographers, photographers, and illustrators 'to help fill specific content needs.'” However, the contributing photographers are the ones who figure out what the subscribers will be looking for.

These days, stock imagery has become kind of its own aesthetic category that’s posed and weird without any apparent reason. Incredibly, according to Shutterstocker Emily Goodwin, “it's the utilitarian content—the images that capture the banalities and absurdities of everyday life—that prove popular” on the website.