LA CROSSE, WIS — It’s now been a full 16 hours since a nature photo was taken without featuring an inspirational quote that only makes sense if you don’t put too much thought into it.

The picture features trees with the sun’s rays peering through the background of the fall colors.

“I noticed the problem right away,” Anna-Mae Basikbish, one of the first to see the picture on Facebook, said. “I was just like, wait… how come I can see the whole picture? Shouldn’t there be like, a bunch of faux calligraphy covering up the nature? It looked weird.”

Social media experts say although these instances are rare, they have seen it happen before.

“99.7% of nature photographs on Facebook are accompanied by a quote like ‘This is the REAL anxiety cure’ or ‘there are no short cuts to greatness’ or some other extremely generalized take without any nuance,” Dr Sharon Lyke, professor of communications at UW-La Crosse, said. “But it isn’t unheard of to see a picture without those quotes. They are just typically in black and white.”

Fortunately, it’s not too late for this particular picture. There are several resources designed to help, such as SNFNA, the Save Nature From Nature Association. 

“[SNFNA] can help by having one of its volunteers ‘rescue’ a photo by screenshotting it, cropping it, adding a quote and then releasing it back into the wild of social media landscape,” Dr Lyke said. “They really do great work.”

Reporter Sam Shilts contributed to this article.