The Ultimate List of Stock Imagery Sites for Churches
As pastors and church media workers, we are always looking for great imagery for our next message or our next church promotional piece. The question is “where do we find the imagery for these projects?”
The Google Secret?
One of the first questions I ask during a media consultation is, “Where do you find imagery and graphics you use in your ministry?” All too often the answer is, “we get our photos from Google or from social media.”
Here is a BIG Secret not many pastors are aware of. Images found from a search engine like Google, social media, and most other websites, are not good to use. (Keep reading for FREE sites you can safely use). Why cant we just use any image we find? Taking an image or graphic from the world wide web, without permission from the original creator, is illegal. That’s right, ILLEGAL! Taking images off of most website is stealing. It is breaking the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. By doing this you are also breaking God’s 8th commandment, “Thou shall not steal.” Anytime someone creates anything (photography, illustration, graphic, etc) they retain the copyright to that piece as the creator. And, if the creator (their attorney, agent, or heirs) finds out that you used one of their creations, without permission, they can legally take you and the church to court for stealing their intellectual property. If they win, you and the church could be hit with fines that could close a church.
As someone who is a graphic designer and photographer, I feel it is my duty to tell you this to keep you safe from unwanted lawsuits.
The Ultimate List for Great Imagery
Now, let’s look at what you came here for… Where can you find imagery and graphics that you can use for free that won’t get anyone in trouble? There is really no secret. There are tons of articles that share some great places to find free stock photography. The real tip is to read each stock site’s terms and conditions. This helps to make sure that the images are free to use for commercial purposes. Yes, from my understanding, a church is a commercial entity when it comes to stock imagery and graphics.
Without any further verbiage getting in the way, here are my top 10 websites to get free imagery and graphics online.
Unsplash.com
Unsplash is one of the internet’s sources of freely usable imagery. They offer over 1 million free high-resolution images that you can use however you would like to. The imagery found on Unsplash was given by an amazing community of photographers to help others with their creative endeavors. This one is my favorite because it also has an app for smartphones.
Freeimages.com
Freeimages was launched in February 2001 as an alternative for expensive stock photography. The site has evolved into a massive community with over 2,500,000 registered users and around 400,000 photos online. The images found on FreeImages.com can be used for just about anything.
Morguefile.com
Morguefile is an archive of free high-resolution digital imagery that has been around since 1996. All photos on Morguefile are free for you to download and use in commercial or other types of work.
Pixabay.com
Pixabay is a great archive of imagery for creative church projects. They allow for commercial and non-commercial usage of their content. Pixabay offers photography, illustration, video, and music that can be used for a wide variety of content.
NegativeSpace.co
NegativeSpace has a collection of beautiful, high-resolution stock photography for personal or commercial usage. Their imagery is licensed under Creative Commons 0 (CC0) and are completely free to use.
Gratisography.com
Gratisography is probably the quirkiest collection of free high-resolution images. Imagery found on Gratisography can be used for both personal and commercial projects and can be adapted and modified for use.
Reshot.com
Reshot is home to handpicked, unique non-stocky images that you can use as you wish. Imagery from this site comes with a nonexclusive copyright license. This means their imagery is for personal and commercial purposes.
Stocksnap.io
StockSnap makes it easy and simple to find, share, and use amazing imagery for all creative projects. Each image is governed exclusively by the generous terms of the Creative Commons CC0 license. Which means images can be used for personal and commercial projects.
istockphoto.com
iStockphoto is a paid stock photography service. They have millions of great photographs, illustrations, videos, and audio to use for your projects. They made it on this list because they give away one free photo of the week, one stock illustration of the month, and a free stock video clip of the month.
lightstock.com
Lightstock is a little bit different. Lightstock is a paid stock photography service that specializes in faith-based stock photos, videos, and ready-made graphics and templates. They made it on this list because they give away a free photo, video, and vector every week.
What do you think of these 10 free stock photography sites? My hope is that you will find this article helpful as you create content to reach your communities with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
(Note: Please read the terms and conditions for each website that is used for stock imagery and graphics. As of April 24th, 2020 these sites are good to use. However, their Terms and conditions for the websites mentioned in this article may change.)
