Finding or taking the right photo for the communication pieces in your local church can be both time consuming and difficult. I have spent countless hours sifting through page after page of images looking for that “right” image to fit my vision and my church community. If you have ever worked on materials that needed some photos, I would bet you have done the same.
While this does not sound like a hard or technical task on the surface, it can be very easy to go wrong and gravitate to some of the most cliché and overused images that, in my opinion, do more harm than good.
I want to give you what I think are the top four types of images that you should try to avoid using. Then I want to break down some practical tips on how to steer clear of the following stock image pitfalls:
#1. The Worshipper of Wheat
Because it is apparently very common for people to find themselves in the middle of a wheat field, hands stretched in praise. This one especially does not make sense when a church is in any urban environment or geographical location that is void of any wheat fields whatsoever.
“But Steve, the wheat and the tares!? It’s biblical!!!”
I can count on one finger the number of times I have seen wheat used within good context. The rest of my fingers are busing counting all the flippant default uses of this sort of image in places that it has no right.
#2. The Abnormally Happy Strangers Doing Things
We never actually know what these people are doing or why it has made them so enormously happy. I get it, people’s faces pull a lot of attention in design. And do you really want to show unhappy people?
There has to be a balance here. However, my problem is not just that you see this stuff ALL over the place, but it is not real or genuine. Seriously.
#3. The Babbling Brook of Hope and … Water
This one is a little more tricky. There certainly can be good-use cases and implications with a graphic like this, as with the wheat. However, people are simply overexposed and too savvy for the same thing year after year. While you could argue that this image logically fits, it still may have trouble in remaining effective with people.
#4. The Uprooted and Soon-to-Be Dead Plant Sprout in My Hands to Represent Life and Growth
This one has to be one of my top. I have seen so many versions of this exact same concept that it is nauseating. In all fairness, I used a very similar image early on in my church design days. It was OK to do in that current situation because the church had NOTHING up to that point. It was new to everyone there and really worked … for about a year.
