An excellent blog I’ve recently been following is Shawn Anthony’s Lo-Fi Tribe. His take on faith is both insightful and authentic. On Friday he put up a thought-provoking post entitled:
The Use of Stock Photos on Church Websites
Shawn’s position seems to be one of “There is never any good reason to use stock photos on a church website. It’s just too fake.” (My paraphrase of his thoughts, not a direct quote.)
The comments others left rang with resounding agreement. The concept resonated with me as well. I believe using stock photos tends toward inauthenticity, but my view isn’t one of such totality. I’d say, “Yeah they are fake, and real pictures are better, but in some circumstances they could work.”
For example, Church Plant Media is a company who designs websites for church plants. Their client list includes such respectable organizations as Act29 Network, Purpose Driven Planting, and ChurchPlanters.com. If you look through websites they’ve designed you see a lot of stock imagery.
I left some devil’s advocate style comments on Shawn’s site and received a hardy reply from his other blog readers. Shawn muses that when you publish something publicly, “you open yourself up to critique.” In regards to comments left on his site he was right. A great discussion ensued. The level of reaction was so gut-level I thought to myself, “Shawn’s really probed something deep here,” so I wanted to share the concept with you guys.
What do you think about using stock photography on church websites? How fake is it? Are there any legitimate reasons to do so?
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