Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

http://www.healyourchurchwebsite.com/archives/000979.shtml
There has been a passionate debate on the churchsite-chat group on the topic of “Church member body doubles.” As you can tell from the subject line, there are some folks who make a compelling argument that we are being disingenuine when we use stock images. I respectfully disagree, and in fact think it irresponsible in some respects.

MeanDean checks in with a thought provoking post on whether to use, on a Church web site, pictures of real people or stock photography.

It’s a sticky wicket.  Stickier than the frosting on Deans faux donuts..;).  We’ve traded a bit of email over the issue because I’m in the midst of putting the final touches on a website for my church, Ridge Point Community Church in Holland, MI and have worked multiple large images of “real” Ridge Pointers into the design.  No stock photos.  Lots of closeups.  I can see Dean twiching already…;)

But, after reading Dean’s article, I completely agree with his decision.  For his church.  Yeah, I know, you could maybe construe what I’m going to say as relativism but this is one of those times when you can’t make a unilateral design decision that applies to all churches and their web sites.  We don’t do that in the business world, but for some reason in a church context these discussions seem to head that way.

So why “real” images for Ridge Point?  It boils down to three areas; Context, Culture, and Target Audience.

Context:
Ridge Point is in West Michigan.  If you know anything about this area, you know how densely populated it is with churches.  There are street corners around here that literally have churches on 2 of them.  In Zeeland, you can walk past 6-8 churches in 20 minutes.  Ridge Point is somewhat out in the country, and even there within a 3 mile radius there are probably 8-10 churches.  While this is great from a perspective of choice, it offers up the challenge of differentiation.  How do I, as a web designer, communicate how Ridge Point is different in the context of all these other local churches?  It’s a big enough challenge on its own, much harder to do with the “genericized” imagery of stock photography where the people are Exacto-knifed out of a background, devoid of any context.  To put it bluntly, I’ve just not seen any stock photography that would adequately differentiate RP from other churches.

Culture:
Ridge Point is truly differentiated by it’s culture - it’s why the church exists to begin with.  RP was birthed out of a more traditional church, and given the task of reaching out to seekers using methods that just didn’t work as well in the parent church.  When’s the last time you heard a Doors, Beatles, or Don Henley tune on Sunday morning?  We’ve done that, along with movie clips, live dramas, live dance, mime, puppetry - all tools used to communicate the Gospel in a relevant fashion.  But rather than just me deciding what aspects of the church to promote, I put the church leadership through a branding discussion.  While foreign ground for many churches, basically I wanted to hear from the church leadership how they would want people to describe RP if given 10 minutes to peruse the web site.  What I got were things like “creative”, “fine arts focused”, “blue jeans OK”, “vibrant”, “friendly”, “inclusive”.  I’m convinced that the absolute best way to communicate these brand attributes is to use a lot of pictures from Ridge Point events showing Ridge Point people.  Really, how could we - with a straight face - attempt to communicate some of those attributes using stock photos?  The other aspect of Ridge Point’s culture is that it’s one of high involvement.  I grew up in a church where if you weren’t the Pastor, a Deacon or Elder, or in the choir you really weren’t involved much.  At Ridge Point there are 800 volunteer positions. No, you read that right - 800.  In a church that has a weekly attendance of around 1200.  I’m not sure how I would communicate this aspect of Ridge Point with stock photos.

Target Audience:
The biggie.  Ridge Point actively targets “Post-Moderns”.  If you don’t know that term, a Google search will do a better job educating you than I can - I’m still getting my arms around the concept too.  But in series of articles on the topic Christian Standard magazine which had this to say:

“Postmoderns yearn for a reality-based religion.  Postmoderns will see Jesus first in us. They will understand the �mystery of God� through my story. The Bible is a living letter, confessed by both my life and my lips. Four spiritual laws and baptismal arguments are meaningless. A rich life in God is an apologetic no postmodern can deny or denounce.”

and

“The Web is also their oyster. E-mail, chat rooms, discussion boards, and Internet-based technologies drive their outreach.” (http://www.christianstandard.com/pdfs/58.pdf)

To reach this audience, the new Ridge Point site will have commenting, group blogs,  a discussion forum, and member profiles - all as a way of promoting community via the web site. 

If Postmoderns “see Jesus in us”, and the first place they look is our web site, then I gotta show “us”.  Whatever it takes.  I can’t take the chance that a stock photo will do the trick.

Due Dilligence
So we’ll do the due dilligence.  Photos will be reviewed by staff members.  We’ll get permission where it make sense.  Images of non-staff members will only be accompanied by names or other contact info in special cases,or upon request.  But - I don’t intend to be legalistic.  The point isn’t to show Ridge Point at “this” moment in time, but “a” moment in time.  In fact I’m using 4 year old pictures of kids in many places - they still tell the RP story but the passage of time helps to soften the sensitivity.  We won’t weed out pictures showing ex-members unless they ask us to or unless it just makes sense to based on the situation.

So are stock photos “evil”?  Not at all.  For many churches they make sense—not for Ridge Point.  The feedback I’ve gotten while training the Ridge Point staff, board and Elders on the new site has confirmed this - the response to the photos has been overwhelmingly positive - really the highlight of the site.

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. Michael Boyink (Author) on September 04, 2003

   It struck me while going to bed last night…besides not showing context another thing that bugs me about churches using stock photography is that it puts the church in the position of commoditizing people.  Might be OK for a business, but not a church.

2. Dave J. on September 04, 2003

   Another risk is that finding a stock image that suits the content can be hard.  Can you find a picture of a Sunday School class in a stock file?

   And you also want to show the environment the people are in to show more context.

   Dean’s site uses stock images where stock images are expected.  That makes his solution fit his needs.

3. Tim Bedanr on September 04, 2003

   I understand your argument for using ‘real’ people at the web site. (I would argue that anyone ‘posing’ for a photograph is not real, but a facsimilie of him/herself and could be an unreal as any stock photo.) My only hope is that you get the photos taken by a professional—or Photoshop them using some sort of style. (I Sepia Tone everything at the church site I work on regularly—it gives all the photos a common look at feel and helps amateur photos look better.)

   I think that you get beyond postmoderns know that you are targeting them by allowing them to see that you know that they know you are targeting them—basic irony might work here. I think that all they want is authenticism, not high-gloss marketing images like they see in Aveda, Gap, A&F or BeBe ads (or wait postmoderns still buy that stuff in droves maybe they really do like glossy unreal photos or maybe they know its unreal but don’t care).

4. Tim Bedanr on September 04, 2003

   Here is the same comment I posted at Dean’s site: sorry for the redundancy.

   ###

   The best argument for using stock photo is model releases, protection of minors and privacy issues. The burden of keeping the files is too great for the supposed misguided payoff of being ‘truthful’.

   The second best argument is quality—who has seen really great quality church-sourced photos that are worthy of being used for marketing purposes (lets not kid ourselves—church web sites are a form of marketing—and visitors understand and even expect that it is).

   The third is that stock photography, marketing, etc. is ubiquitous in our consumer culture—I’m not sure that anyone except those in marketing or advertising would even understand the debate. I think most people understand the concept of models (or stock photography) just as they understand that actors are not like the character’s they portray. I would like to hear from someone who felt stock photography actually misrepresented a church to the point where they felt ‘lied to’.

   Now this doesn’t mean that you can’t use stock photography irresponsibly. To show diversity when you have none or crowds when you have none or happy people when you have none—is unethical. But just as churches need to be responsible with finances, attendance numbers, facility maintenance—they also need to set higher standards in marketing their church.

   I use stock photos (from stock.xchng) to create the brand/image for the Church In Uptown (please don’t judge the site—its temporary, read this entry to learn more about what I did).

   http://216.119.70.145/blog-detail.asp?EntryID=270&BloggerID=1
   http://www.churchinuptown.com/

   But I also provide a ‘gallery’ where we post images from events, featuring real people—I think of these galleries as the ‘truth in advertising’. This way I get the glossy effect of stock photos (or professional photos) and realistic portrayals of church folks.

   PS - As for mispelling ‘doughnut’, all bloggers need to download the ieSpeling plugin for Explorer.

   http://216.119.70.145/blog-detail.asp?EntryID=317&BloggerID=1

5. Michael Boyink (Author) on September 04, 2003

   Well, most if not all of the images I’m using were taken by an amatuer - either myself or others in the church, using a 2MP camera.

   Take a look and see what you think about the quality:

   http://www.ridgepoint.org/home.php

   Again, I don’t think this issue is a “make or break” issue for the success of a church site.  I just can’t for Ridge Point, use stock images and feel like I’ve built the best site possible for the church.

6. Tim Bedanr on September 05, 2003

   I think the quality of the images are very good—but you can tell their taken with a digital camera (from the artifacts) and that the skin tones tend to the red (especially in the cheeks). However, only those in the biz will notice. But the composition and style is really good! Kudos.

   FYI: I did get some errors (64 - Host not available—I’m not familiar with PHP) while clicking around, but refreshing the page worked—not certain what’s up with that.

7. Michael Boyink (Author) on September 28, 2003

   I had to circle back to this, as on the way home from church we were catching a message that seemed to speak to the core of this discussion - the issues of safety and fear as a Christian community.  His argument was that as Christians we’ve created a catch-22 for ourselves - we’ve created an alternate culture because the “world is so bad”.  Yet, one of the reasons the world is so bad is because we’re not in it.

   The scripture he quoted was John 17:15; “I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from Satan’s power.”

   His point was that safety is God’s concern, not ours.  He knows the world is bad, but promises to keep us safe anyway.

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