Weeding through all the licenses, knowing what you can and can’t do when you’re searching for stock photos for your church will take a while, especially if you don’t know what each of the licenses mean.
I’ve been blogging since 2013 so for me, this is cake. Let me walk you through it and help you find some amazing hidden jewels you can use for sermon illustrations, bulletins, backgrounds, videos, countdowns, and more!!! Best of all, it’s all in simple terms that won’t waste your time. 🥰
If you’re looking to speed up the process and you’re making church bulletins, I’ve already done all the work for you! You can grab over 300+ free bi-fold church bulletins here:
- Free Church Bulletins
- Free Traditional Church Bulletins (Black/White)
- Free Traditional Church Bulletins (Color)
If you’re looking for Christian wallpapers, there’s a ton of cute wallpapers here.
Here’s where to get free stock photos for your church…
Where to Get Free Stock Photos For Your Church
Licenses
But before we get started, I want to make sure you understand 3 main licenses for your blogging stock images that some of these sites offer.
- Creative Commons – CC: You may use it for your blog, but not for products you will sell. And a lot of times – not always – you must give attribution.
- Creative Commons Zero – CCO: Free for personal and commercial use. You can use it in products you’re going to sell, and you don’t have to give attribution.
- Licensing by their website: The website has its own licensing and policies and you should read more about it in their website!
Free Stock Photo Sites
Sarah Titus: I JUST started creating stock photos for churches and ministry leaders! You can get the first pack I made all about how we are God’s new creation free when you use discount code: BELIEVE
Creation Swap: This site has a lot of great photos, but also other resources like countdown timer videos, slides, vector art, sound, social media images, and graphics. Some are free and some are paid for, so you just have to look at prices to keep things free.
Shopify: Did you know that Shopify has its own FREE STOCK photography! Not only for store owners – which I totally recommend if you have a store to use Shopify – but also for anyone. They have beautiful and amazing pictures for you to use under the CCO licensing! So cool!
Pexels: This is one of my favorite stock photo websites! All of their photos are under a CCO licensing. I am pretty sure you will find any sort of photography you need there and the pictures are edgy and different. Unique. Not run-of-the-mill-samesies.
Kaboompics: This website is amazing and all of her photos are beautiful. Although, her photos aren’t listed under CCO License, they allow personal and commercial use with no attribution required at all.
Unsplash: Here you can find edgy and different kinds of photos, not run-of-the-mill stuff that you’ll see in a lot of other places. Best of all, ALL of the photos are listed under CCO License.
City Girl Searching: Gorgeous photography, very feminine and warm! Plus her resources are free as well, all of her photos are under the CC license!
Free Nature Stock: This site has a lot of pictures all about nature, animals (eagle, lion, etc.) The pictures are good quality and the license is CCO.
StockSnap.io: They are a bit limited on the amount of pictures they have, but the license is CCO and you can find some more mainstream keyword searches here like “eagle”, “beach”, or “flower”.
Pixaby: You’ll find some great pictures here, both realistic and AI-created. They allow for commercial use and the site is free to download the images!
ChatGPT: You can make your own AI images that you can use on your website (commercial use is okay), but with their free account, there is a daily limit on how many you can create. When you’re typing in the box, just say something like: “Make an image of…” and then describe the image you’d like to see. Be very detailed and descriptive when creating your own images.
Low-Cost Stock Photos Sites
Sometimes, in order to find photos you like or fit your aesthetics, you might have to purchase them. When you need to go that route, here’s my favorite site that I personally use for stock photos and love them!
Deposit Photos: Don’t get the subscription plan, wait for sales. They usually have a lot of sales throughout the year. Sometimes you can get each photo for 80¢ when you buy a pack of credits. Use that as needed and then during Black Friday, you can get them as cheap as 50¢ per photo when you buy a pack of credits. This is the time to stock up on credits (1 credit = 1 stock photo; credits never expire).
In order to be alerted when the 50¢ sale is going on, sign up for AppSumo’s email list here. They will email you when any sales are going on so you never miss it!
Another great site and this one is specifically geared toward Christianity is Lightstock.
Lightstock: Their plan is $19/month, so it’s not the cheapest route, but they have a lot of really great pictures to choose from. Here’s a quick sample of what they have available for the keyword “Worship”…
Keywords to Use
You can see a full list of my Christian words here for ideas of what to search when on the sites, but here are some more words that you may not think of…
- Candles
- Birds (like doves, eagles, etc.)
- Flame / Fire
- Earth / World
- Light
- Field
- Sheep / Lamb
- Sky
- Pew
- Tree
- Nature
- Music
- Stained Glass
- Old Window
- Hands
- Wheat
- Israel
- Jerusalem
- Heart / Love
- Lion
- Communion
- Forest
- Bible
- Hill
- Family
- Beach
- Peace
- Happy
- Background
- Community
- Praise
- Heaven / Clouds
- Concert
- Art
- Path
- Bible Study
- Flowers
- Worship
- Prayer
Try to think of verses and then see what you visualize in your mind for the verse. For example, Psalm 23:1 starts off with, “The Lord is my shepherd…” Search for images with the keyword “shepherd”.
Verse 2 continues, “He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.”
You can search river, still water, waterfalls, water fountain, pasture, etc.
By thinking of verses and then imagining pictures to go with it, it’ll help you think of more keywords for your project that you can search for. ❤️
