"Chris, would you come in here please?" There was a tone in her senior pastor's voice that made Chris a little nervous. She walked down the hall and opened the door to Pastor Bill's office. The pastor sat in a chair across from his desk; with him was a well-dressed, middle-aged man. Neither of them looked very happy to see her.

"Have a seat, Chris," Pastor Bill said as she tentatively walked into the room. "This is John Hendricks." The man nodded. "He's a professional photographer—he owns Starbright Studio over on Grant Avenue," the pastor continued. "He's here because we have a bit of a problem."

Pastor Bill looked Chris directly in the eyes as he went on. "John makes his living by selling the pictures that he takes. One of the ladies who works in his studio visited here last week, and she noticed that we had a number of his pictures in one of our presentations. Part of her job is to grant usage rights, and she was pretty sure that we never asked to use the photos, so she called John."

"Wow, I didn't mean to do anything that would hurt anyone!" Chris responded. "I just did a search for pictures for the service, and his shots looked good …"

"… and you didn't bother to check to see whose they were, or if you could legally use them," Pastor Bill finished. His tone was calm, but Chris could tell he was fairly upset.

The photographer had sat uncomfortably through the discussion. He looked at Chris and said, "I'm sorry—I feel bad, and I don't want anyone to get into trouble. It's just that I put a great deal of time and effort into finding just the right shots, and I rely on those photographs to pay my bills."

"No, no," the pastor interrupted. "You shouldn't feel bad at all. The problem is completely on our end. We'll immediately check all of our files to make sure that we don't have your or anyone else's photos in there without permission." They all agreed that this was an appropriate course of action and the meeting adjourned. Chris walked away from the meeting with a sinking feeling in her stomach, well aware that things would be changing in the image procurement process.

The Issue

With the advent of the Internet and digital photography, getting high-quality digital images for use in videos and presentations has become as easy as a quick Google search and a few mouse clicks. Unfortunately, finding photos that are legal to use is not that simple.

In 1988, the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act gave photographers and video creators both the intellectual rights to their artwork and the copyright to the actual physical works themselves. Copyright law exists to protect the authors of "artistic works" in the much the same way that it protects inventors—however, it is difficult to download an invention such as a diesel engine or an electron microscope from the Internet! Digital photos, on the other hand, can be easily downloaded to a computer in a matter of seconds; from there, it's a simple process to edit them, combine them with other images, and drop them into multimedia presentations.

Both Christian ethics and the law support the idea that it's illegal and immoral to use the works of other individuals without their permission. So what's a busy worship service planner to do?

A "do-it-yourself" spirit would seem to solve many copyright-related issues, and in fact, the recent proliferation of high-quality digital cameras (along with image manipulation programs such as Photoshop) has made excellent quality graphics "doable" for those willing to invest the time and energy. Time itself, however, is a resource that many worship leaders and tech directors simply do not have.

With the realization that most churches will have to rely in many cases on outside sources for their image needs, there are three primary ways to keep things legal.

Search

Good, quality websites for free photos do exist on the Internet. Many, if not most, of these websites were created by individuals who understood that some organizations simply cannot afford traditional image-supply sources (which can sometimes charge hundreds of dollars for a single image). MorgueFile.com and Stock.xchng are two sites that offer a wide selection of free, high-quality still photos. FreeFoto.com also allows Christian churches to use its shots free of charge. There are other sites which offer use of images under certain circumstances and with various limitations—these sites often carry "terms of use" pages (or something like them) that lay out the legal groundwork for their expectations. Wikipedia, the open-source encyclopedia, is one of these sites. It offers images to support its encyclopedic entries; many of these images are in the public domain or are available for free use. Again, just check the usage note on the copyright page.

If you have Mozilla Firefox (and you should!), another great tool is the Creative Commons search extension (if you don't know how to add a search engine to your Firefox browser, just click here). This engine allows you to search Flickr, a user-driven repository of photo collections, and limit that search to photos licensed under the Creative Common deeds that permit commercial or public use.

Sites for free video clips are somewhat harder to come by, probably because they take up large amounts of computer memory by their very nature. Creating a system to offer them to the public requires significant investment on the part of the site managers. Searches for the terms "worship video" or "video loops" will often turn up sites that have video clips, some of which may be usable by churches. FaithVisuals.com and TheWorkOfThePeople.com sometimes offer free video clips, in addition to the many short videos that are offered for sale.

Ask

Virtually all websites include an e-mail address or guestbook to allow site users to contact the owners or system administrators. In many cases, simply asking for permission to use shots is all it takes—many amateur photographers are thrilled to have their shots become part of a church presentation. Willingness to allow free usage will often be limited by who owns the website: A single site owner posting vacation shots is probably much more likely to allow usage than a major national newspaper site.

Sites that provide backgrounds for Web pages are often good sources for abstract shots. A simple e-mail can often secure permission for use of the backgrounds, especially if the request is made by a non-profit organization. While these backgrounds are often tiled (small JPEGs intended to be repeated over and over), in many cases they can be stretched to fill an entire screen (in fact, blowing a photo up past its intended size can sometimes provide very interesting—and usable—blurring or pixelization effects).

One thing to watch out for: Image sites (especially those that specialize in user postings) often can't guarantee that their shots are not actually the intellectual property of individuals other than those who posted them—this is especially true of sites that offer "wallpaper" for use on computer desktops. Many times these sites contain copyrighted or trademarked images of movies or TV shows that are not legal for use as anything other than as a desktop image. In any case, it's a good idea to keep a hard copy of permission received from the site, and to be willing to immediately cease using any contested shots.

Pay

It's a reality of our age that most churches don't have a lot of extra money. Every church, however, has the responsibility to act with moral integrity. Many sites offer photos—and in some cases, video clips—for sale, either on disc or by direct download. Prices for individual shots or video clips vary wildly, although the overall trend seems to be for prices to come down as more companies enter the market. Purchasing collections of photos or clips can often yield substantial discounts. A recent development online is the advent of iTunes-like sites for photos—these sites allow users to inexpensively choose only those photos that they want for quick download. Sometimes, however, even purchased photos come with limitations to their usage—it's always best to make sure that you read through the terms of use on any site before you buy. Examples of these kinds of sites are ClipArt.com (and its sister site, Photos.com, iStockPhoto, and Corbis.com. These sites vary in price and selection, so make sure to know your budgetary restrictions before you begin your search.

The end of the story

Chris finished up the worship slides for the weekend. She'd been putting in extra hours all week to eliminate any questionable shots from the church's digital photo library. She had had several follow-up meetings with Pastor Bill in which she documented her progress; one positive thing that had come out of the meetings was his increased understanding for the need for high-quality backgrounds. In a meeting that week, the finance committee had approved $200 for photo site subscriptions. It wasn't much, but in conjunction with the free photo sites she had found, Chris felt that she had at least the basic tools she needed to prepare for upcoming services.

John Hendricks had also stopped in a few days earlier with a disc of shots that he was donating to the church. Chris had thanked him profusely and put his very high-quality photos "on hold" for a special occasion. The slides she had just finished weren't as "artsy" as John's (or as she preferred), but she had to admit they didn't look that bad. All of this copyright stuff was going to mean some extra work on an ongoing basis, she knew. But having actually met someone who relied on his photos for his living made Chris feel that it was going to be worthwhile—both in her eyes and in God's eyes.

Copyright © 2007 FaithVisuals.com