Getting free images to use is tricky, the usually either suck, are off topic or are used by everyone and their mum [yes I’m talking about Unsplash in that last point]. Luckily, there are more and more services coming out to help, including ChurchMag offering its own free photos for you to use in your church, ministry or blog. But one of the latests that we here at ChurchMag discovered is Freely, full of free Christian photos.
What is Freely
Freely is a site that is seeking to…
“…make high-quality Christian stock photography available for free. Not because it has no value; but because we believe in giving to equip the Church.”
To do this, they are open to submissions from anyone as long as they don’t mind their image being licensed under Creative Commons Zero licence (aka you can use them for WHATEVER).
The Good
The best thing about this site is that the images have a distinct Christian theme to them. That means you don’t have the issue of defaulting to a pretty landscape from an alternative free stock image.
These are also free so they cost you nothing and you don’t have to worry about giving any attribution to the photographer. While I’ve never really found this to be too much of an issue for blog posts, it avoids a painful headache regarding slides in a presentation. No worries about adding a garish URL to the picture or an extra slide with attribution at the end.
Finally, anyone can contribute to Freely, so if you are a bit of an amateur photographer (or protog) and you want to help out Christians with top quality free photos (not cheese stock) then head over and contribute.
The Bad
But freely isn’t without it’s faults. Importantly, it’s a very new site and service so there are only a few images there so far. This could easily lead to not being able to find a suitable image or reusing the same tired image again and again fairly quickly.
Further to the previous point, there is no search feature on the site…yet. This isn’t a real issue yet due to the small selection of images but if the site does expand, there could be real issue with finding an appropriate image.
Conclusion
Freely isn’t without it’s faults, but it is a great idea and resource that I’m sure many people will find a great use for. It’s certainly worth keeping an eye on to see how it grows and evolves.
Christopher Battles says
Gracias.
I will grab a few of them to put in my Google Drive for slideshow stuff for church.
Chris says
No problem Christopher, maybe hit up the person behind it and say thanks to them for making it. I’m not the one responsible!
Sean Leacy (@GeekAthair) says
Great site! I’ve been using Pexel a lot lately but may need to add this to my list of sites to check from now on.
Chris says
Well who knows, maybe Pexels will start scrapping Freely too? And the best feature of pexels is its search which is the biggest downfall of freely IMO. Still Freely definitely offers something that pexels doesn’t. Glad you like it Sean.
Rachel Blom says
Thanks for the tip. I like the quality of the pics so far! I do hope they’ll add that search feature though. Not to bash a free gift, but when they keep adding stuff that would be very helpful.
[email protected] says
I know Rachel. I did notice that they added an Easter menu to the side, that’s a good step forward. It will be cool to see how it evolves.
Dawesi says
We use dollarphotoclub as they have great quality photos at $1 each…
We use them a lot on our Christian portal blog posts, but a good range of Christian and general concept photos.
(not I don’t work there)
[email protected] says
That’s good, I know there are some really good and cheap photo solutions out there but for some church plants, even those few dollars might not be on their budget yet, freely can be a good alternative for them.
Laurie Neumann says
Wow, this is a great resource. Doing church web design, we are always on the lookout for Christian themed images. Even if there’s not a lot of them, they look good. And they would be great additions to blog posts.
Thanks so much for sharing this with us!
Somwang Issaramala says
We develop free christian photo website. CrossStock.co