What is it about handprints that kids pastors will sell their birthright for a hand print photo or logo. I say this because I like everyone who ever visited willow creek 10 years ago added a hand print to our logo.

(here is ours I did resist calling our kidmin promiseland even thought I very badly wanted to so I just settled for the well-placed handprint.)

We already have established that Kids pastors are suckers for the letter “Z” Next to the letter Z I would have to say that the second love of every kids pastor heart would have to be child sized handprints on things or the stock photo of a kid holding out painted hands. Kids pastors love hand prints is part of the very fabric it runs as deep as youth guys and goatees.

By conducting a informal poll on twitter I have come up with the following stockphotos to avoid due to cronic overuse. If you are feeling bad because you have used these don’t worry everyone else has to, thus the whole overuse thing. I thought I would do the Kidmin community a favor and let know what the most overused stock photos are so you either will have easier access to them or know what they look like and how to avoid them. Either way my intentions are to be helpful so here goes.

#1

Any kid with paint on his hands I know how tempting this is to put on your church’s website. Don’t do it. Resist the urge walk away you thank me later when you find out 4 other churches used the same one.

#2

This one is crazy popular and could have been #1 avoid all pictures of kids blowing dead dandelions. Dandelion shots are the money shot of children’s ministry equal parts fun and sentiment.

#3

Here it is the ever popular “fun” shot a circle of kids standing over a photographer. Avoid at all costs mainly because this shot here was #1 around 1993 and the fact it has only sliped two places says something about the pervasiveness of this photo.

#4

What #3 was for fun in 1993 is what this little chart climber is to fun in 2008 when this little image burst onto the kidmin scene. It is the modern fun photo. This particular photo is an illustrator file so it is easily modified so detecting this stock image isn’t easy since it has so many variations, but a vigilant eye can spot it and all its different forms. Rudyard Kipling should have added this to his poem “If you can spot image, If you can resist it’s use – you will be a man my son.”

#5

Last but not least “airplane arms” very fun and very popular. If you look though any kidmin stock images you will find many different pictures with “airplane arms” they seem whimsical but must be avoided. Out of all the airplane arm images this one is most popular I think it has to do with the contrast of red set against the blue sky we are instinctually drawn to it like a bug to a bright light. Fight the urge fight the power use non-typical stock photos you’ll hate me know and thank me later.