Collide Magazine

In Stock: An Introduction to Stock Photos and Video

Tiffani Barnes - Originally posted Tuesday, January 1, 2008 -

We live in an image-driven society where people are inundated with visual and auditory stimuli all day, every day. As a result, most people will decide what they think of your ministry before they ever darken your doors. They will look at your website or the flyer for an upcoming sermon series and—consciously or unconsciously—determine whether your ministry is worth an investment of their time.

What does this mean to you? It means having professional-quality content is important to the success of your ministry. Your website, informational brochures, magazine ads, and promotional flyers make your first impression for you. That first impression has to be a good one, or people won’t give you the chance to make a second. Stock content can play a major role in helping your ministry or organization put its best foot forward, so here’s what you need to know:

Stock Basics
The stock landscape can be very confusing. It consists of images, videos, vector art, music, and even Flash files. It comes in both royalty-free and rights-managed formats, and can be purchased via subscription or per download. Before we address how stock can be useful in your ministry, lets further explore the different options.

Rights-Managed vs. Royalty-free
Rights-managed stock is mainly used when the buyer wants exclusive rights to the media. There also is a form of rights-managed stock called editorial, which consists of news coverage, sports, and entertainment stock. Rights-managed stock isn’t cheap—fees can easily extend into the hundreds, even thousands, of dollars and the buyer must pay each time they want to use the media. The price is determined based on factors such as distribution of the media, length of exclusivity, and geographic area where the file is used.

Royalty-free differs from rights-managed because the user pays one flat fee to use the media instead of paying over and over again to use the stock for multiple purposes. Exclusivity is not available in royalty-free stock, and there are limits to how many times the stock can be reproduced under the license (typically it is reproductions in excess of 500,000). A good rule of thumb for royalty-free stock is that it can be used for any type of promotional purpose. However, some royalty-free stock sites offer extended licenses that allow for uses not covered under standard royalty-free licenses.

Stock Providers
The rights-managed arena has consolidated over the years to three main players, Getty Images, Corbis, and JupiterImages. However, there are dozens of players in the royalty-free stock domain. The most popular sites include iStockphoto, ShutterStock, Stockxpert, Revostock, Dreamstime, and Fotolia.

Purchase Types
Before the Internet, users had to purchase stock libraries that came by mail on disks. Libraries were expensive and users may have ended up using only a few images out of the library. Users couldn’t be sure the library contained the right image for their particular project.

Today virtually all stock companies utilize the Internet for distribution, though some still offer collections for purchase on disk. Using the Internet, there are two main ways to purchase. The first is a monthly subscription, which is essentially the all-you-can-eat approach. For a flat monthly fee, users can download as much content as their hearts desire. The second option is per download, which is more of an à la carte approach. Instead of a monthly fee, the purchaser pays only for the specific piece of content they need at the time.

Now that you know what stock is, let’s talk about the pros and cons of using stock as you create visual media for your ministry.

Stock Pros
Affordability—No matter how large or small your ministry or organization, there is never enough money in the production budget to accomplish all the things you want to do. Royalty-free stock is available for as little as $1 an image and $10 per video. There are even a few sites out there that are free, such as Stock.XCHNG (www.sxc.hu). Of course, in the case of Stock.XCHNG you have to get permission from each individual photographer in order to use the image and each one has different limitations on how their image can be used.

Professional Quality—Most people don’t have the equipment or the skills required to capture high-quality content. Stock sites make it easy to collect the raw materials needed to create professional quality collateral for your ministries.

Time and Type—Even if you have the requisite skills to capture images and videos for use in your ministry, you may not have the time. Ministry professionals often wear more than one hat and typically do more than one job, so there is never enough time to get everything done. Stock sites allow you to quickly grab the content you need for your specific project, leaving you more time for the other things.

In addition to time, you also may find yourself needing a specific piece of content you can’t obtain on your own. Say you live in Montana and you need a shot of New York City, or say you need a shot of a tree in a green field but it’s the dead of winter. Those shots would be hard for you to get and extremely expensive; stock content is usually the best solution. Naturally, there are a few drawbacks of stock to keep in mind.

Stock Cons
Stock Look—One downside to using stock is that it has a specific look to it that, especially in the case of people shots, can look too perfect or too generic for your particular purposes. Also, when using stock images of people on your organization’s promotional materials such as informational brochures and websites, members may question why “actual people” aren’t pictured. Most of the time it’s due to the reasons mentioned above, such as the fact that quality pictures of actual ministry participants can be difficult and time-consuming to obtain.

Accessibility—Royalty-free stock is available to anyone who wants to use it, so it’s highly likely that the image you choose for the front of your brochure or the home page of your website may wind up on someone else’s brochure or website. Luckily, most stock sites will tell you how many times the file you are considering purchasing has been downloaded. One way to minimize the risk that your perfect shot will wind up as someone else’s perfect shot is to search for files that haven’t been downloaded very much. The other option is to go with rights-managed files.

Rights-Managed Expenses—If you are considering an image as your signature image, or one around which you are building your brand, you may choose to go the rights-managed route to esure that no one else can utilize it. However, it’s going to cost you, and usually exclusivity is time-limited (one year is standard). Over the years, and depending on the different types of usages, rights-managed imagery can get extremely expensive.

Stock Uses
There are a plethora of uses for stock content. As we mentioned before, the types of content range from images to videos and music, vector files, and even flash files. So what do you do with all that content? Flash files are great when creating websites. They can be anything from slideshow templates to animated buttons to flash animation elements. Vector files also are useful in web design as well as print. There are vector icon sets, background elements, and just about anything else you can think of. Stock video is useful in worship settings as an element of motion backgrounds, sermon illustrations, or intro videos. It can even be used in TV commercials. Stock audio ranges from sound effects to music compositions, which can be useful when editing videos for ministry or as background music to set the mood of the service.

Finally, the most widely used type of stock is stock imagery. Stock imagery varies widely from elements and textures to concept shots of people, places, and things. They can be used in websites, backgrounds for worship, imagery for PowerPoint presentations, and all types of print materials—such as banners, posters, flyers, brochures, handouts, books and book covers, CD packaging artwork, magazine ads, TV commercials, promotional items such as T-shirts, and the list goes on. You can probably think of several ways in which you have used or could use stock imagery in your ministry.

Go for It
Don’t be afraid to see what’s out there. Define a budget and find the stock provider (or providers) that gives you the biggest bang for your buck. The uses are endless and so is the content. You get only one chance to make a first impression, make it a good one.

Tiffani Barnes, a graphic designer and multimedia producer at Infinitelightmedia.com, is the Faith Evangelist for iStockphoto.

Here are a few stock sites to get you started:

Stock Image Sites
GETTY IMAGES
> www.gettyimages.com
CORBIS
> www.corbis.com
JUPITER IMAGES
> www.jupiterimages.com
iSTOCK PHOTO
> www.istockphoto.com
SHUTTERSTOCK
> www.shutterstock.com
STOCKXPERT
> www.stockexpert.com
PHOTOS.COM
> www.photos.com
DREAMSTIME
> www.dreamstime.com
FOTOLIA
> www.fotolia.com
STOCK.XCHNG
> www.sxc.hu

Stock Art Sites
DEVIANT ART
> www.deviantart.com
ART BITZ
> www.artbitz.com
VECTEEZY
> www.vecteezy.com
BITT BOX
> www.bittbox.com
VECTOR VAULT
> www.vectorvault.com

Stock Video Sites
FREE STOCK FOOTAGE
> www.freestockfootage.com
ITN SOURCE
> www.itnsource.com
REVOSTOCK
> www.revostock.com

Stock Music Sites
STOCKMUSIC.NET
> www.stockmusic.net
SHOCKWAVE SOUND
> www.shockwavesound.com
SOUND RANGERS
> www.soundrangers.com