What are the key ingredients that make a great photography website?
Above all, you want a WordPress theme that showcase your photography: the
best themes draw attention to
the images on the site and don't clutter everything up with superfluous
features or over-complicated designs.
Not all WordPress themes are created equal. Just like picking the right camera and lens for your work, a photographer's website is a big factor in creative expression: the way you present yourself online sets the tone for how people will experience your pictures. In a discussion about photography themes over on Envato's community forum, Norris said:
My plea is this: please, please don't consider multi-purpose themes as
"photography" themes. I'm seeing this happen all over the internet, but I
strongly believe it hurts real photographers, and, in the long-run, the
whole WordPress themes community.
13 Premium WordPress Themes for Photography Websites
With that advice in mind, we asked Envato Market's design community for their
favorite WordPress photography themes. Here are their hand-picked selections:
Mentas Portfolio: Flexible Elegant Portfolio Theme
"[This] is
multifunctional and flexible elegant portfolio theme, with tons of
features and options which allow you to make your website unique.”
—Azelab
Outdoor: Creative Photography and Portfolio WordPress Theme
“This is a feature rich theme with a striking design. There are home
page variations to choose from, video support and an interesting
portfolio section with horizontal scrolling. The theme would definitely
accommodate most of the requirements a photographer may have for his
site and what’s more it doesn’t look like a cookie cutter theme in any
way.”
—Aether-Themes
LENS: An Enjoyable Photography WordPress Theme
“A theme that incorporates so many important and small details into
it’s design that make it truly a photographer’s dream web site.
Interesting ideas for the navigation, as well as the layout as a whole,
makes the theme stand out. It’s approach to these makes this a
professional’s theme, rather than a hobbyist one.”
—Aether-Themes
Smarty: Creative Agency and Portfolio WordPress Theme
“Smarty is an ace for showcasing portfolio and photography as its
unique trending structure is designed to bring the best out of your art.
It is highly customizable to suit your needs with its single and
multi-page versions available in both light and dark variants.”
—Jthemes
Valerie: Photography WordPress Theme
“Valerie is a simple and easy to use theme for building your portfolio photography website.”
—StonedThemed
Photography: Responsive Photography Theme
“Great photography theme from ThemeGoods stunning design with lots of feature for professional photographers.”
—StonedThemed
Emilie: Photography Portfolio WordPress Theme
“[Emilie] has four homepage styles so photographers can choose
between different full screen or grid layouts. The theme also offers a
unique full screen menu layout.”
—BeantownThemes
FULLSCREEN: Photography Portfolio WordPress Theme
“A great solution for photographers looking for a nice full screen
homepage layout. The theme also features a unique layout for the
navigation and image category sorting.”
—BeantownThemes
Clean Photo
"This one is targeted at the traveling
photographer or the photography blogger. It achieves the difficult task
of combining both a beautiful photography showcase with space for other
content, such as your journal. The name of the theme speaks for itself.
It’s a really clean design that compels you to look around the site and
see what else it has to offer."
—Aether-Themes
SOHO: Fullscreen Photo and Video WordPress Theme
"This is an instant classic. A truly
immersive full-screen theme with a smooth slideshow and a variety of
options to showcase your portfolio. You can take the traditional road
with this one and let your photography speak for itself or you have the
option of adding more detailed descriptions. And the seamless
integration with social networks will have you sharing your photos on
Facebook in no time."
—Aether-Themes
TwoFold
"This theme certainly has a premium
feel. Its ultra-modern design and attention to detail is what sets
it apart. It has thoughtful features, such as password protected
content, and striking visuals to make your work as a photographer pop.
Many features for showcasing your work are available. The only issue
you’ll have is choosing just one."
—Aether-Themes
Bluebird
"A super modern theme that gets to the
point quickly with a beautiful horizontal slider. Showcasing your work
doesn’t get any easier than this. Captivating transitions all around the
site create an immersive experience – and that’s what a photography
site is all about, creating an experience for the customer not just
serving them with the images."
—Aether-Themes
Fusion
"Finally, this one I’d put under the
category of portfolio themes for photography studios. It’s great for the
freelance photographer but where it shines most is with studios. It has
a layout built to showcase project-based photography and it does this
well. It provides really versatile options for project descriptions and
comprehensive “About” pages that would fit a photography studio
perfectly, making this theme perfect for showing not only your work but
your business as well."
—Aether-Themes
100 Free WordPress Photography Website Themes
Though they don't offer the same dependable quality as premium themes, free themes are great for testing different looks. Here's a selection of free WordPress themes for photographers for you to try out:
Tography Lite: "A beautiful and minimalistic photography WordPress theme. The perfect
choice for photographers who want a simple and attractive site."
Lifestyle: "a minimalist responsive HTML5 Omega child theme for WordPress, created with simplicity in mind."
Divina: "Divina is a fully responsive and a beautiful multipurpose theme.
Designed specially for photographers, model agencies, creatives, fashion
bloggers."
RokoPhoto Lite: "RokoPhoto
Lite is theme made for photographers with a stylish front-page for you
to photograph some of your best work. This theme also includes 2
different types of sliders, portfolio section, as well as built-in
contact form."
Avnii
Eryn
Gridsby: "Gridsby
is a pinterest style gallery theme which is a simple way to showcase a
beautiful photo collection. Gridsby is responsive and retina ready, and
includes an easy method for posting photos to a front page gallery."
Aperture: "Aperture is a simple, responsive theme with a fullscreen slider."
Jax Lite
Dream Way
Harmonic: "Harmonic makes your content sing. No matter if you are a band looking to
get a record deal, a travel blogger wanting to document your trip
around the world or just someone that wants to make their home on
WordPress."
Inovate:
Fukasawa: "Fukasawa
is a minimal masonry style blog theme for photographers and collectors.
It features responsive & retina-ready design, support for the
image, gallery and video post formats, five custom widgets, an archive
page template, a gallery slideshow, custom accent color support, custom
logo support, editor styles and translation ready code. Included
translations: Swedish/svenska."
Hoffman:
Professional
Snaps: "A portfolio theme perfect for showcasing portrait images and galleries."
Snapshot: "Snapshot is a theme built for showing off your photography. You can dive
in and start adding your photos right away and it'll look great.
Snapshot also includes our powerful drag and drop page builder, so you
can use it to create a complete business or company site."
ProtoPress
Riba Lite
Adirondack: "Adirondack
has a bright, clean layout designed to give your content the full
attention it deserves. With large images and neat typography, this theme
is crafted for longform writers and photographers alike."
Boardwalk: "A minimalistic theme with horizontal scrolling."
Fifteen
SKT Black: "a simple, flexible and adaptable responsive multipurpose WordPress theme
which can be used for multiple purposes and industries. So photo
gallery, portfolio, or any business, blogging etc can be done."
Quest:
Photo World: "SKT Photo World is suitable for photographers, business, commercial,
corporates, blogging, portfolio and personal use. Images define and help
one visualize more than words and that is what happens when someone
uses our theme. Set your website on top of this beautiful theme
displaying your primary full width images on the home page slider."
Photo Session: "With a home page dedicated to showcase beautiful images this theme
defines what the site wants to say. Simple theme options and
compatibility with popular plugins like WooCommerce and Contact Form 7.
Easily customize the theme and get a website in no time."
Market
Great
Shopisle
Oren: "Minimal,
simple portfolio theme with blog. Perfect for showing off awesome work.
Fully responsive and easy to set up. Use the Customizer to upload your
own logo and change multiple options. Clean and bloat free code. Perfect
for creative folk and photographers. Visit the getting started page to
learn how to use the theme."
FotoGraphy: "The theme has beautifully designed slider, portfolio section, service
section and instagram showcase. It has four gallery layout, two blog
layout, three single gallery page layout to choose from. The theme has
team and testimonial page to show team member and client testimonials as
well. This theme is fully responsive and built on customizer which
gives you power to configure/customize with live preview."
Sentio: "[A] clean, sharp, modern design based on beautiful typography, nice micro
interactions and a fully responsive layout. It looks great on all kind
of screen resolutions and devices, it's fast and light. You can use
Sentio to emphasize different types of content (standard posts, videos,
images, quotes, links, etc.) and give your blog or site a fresh look and
feel."
Blask: "Blask is a modern portfolio theme focused on showcasing your work in a clean and minimal way."
Luna: "Luna is a simple portfolio theme which highlights your project content
in a beautiful way. Be sleek and sophisticated with a clean layout and a
minimal design."
Fullscreen Lite: "An
onepage, singlepage, landing page, elegant, clean and multipurpose
theme FullScreen Lite packs the features that make it the most preferred
theme for photographers, creative, business and portfolio site. One
Page FullScreen Lite theme entails some fine features likes full width
slider, responsive design, multiple layout options and portfolio
options."
Activello
Arcade Basic
Vantage
Panorama: "Panorama is a multipurpose responsive photography WordPress theme
suitable for corporate, photoblogging, portfolio, business, ecommerce,
personal, interior, author, church and has five different slides
spanning the whole homepage."
Artist Theme: "The
ultimate WordPress theme for artists. Includes a Jetpack-powered
portfolio template to keep your content portable between other themes."
Modern: "Modern is responsive, retina-ready blog and portfolio WordPress theme.
It's perfect for personal and small business portfolios. Supports
Jetpack plugin, Schema.org markup, Theme Hook Alliance action hooks,
translation-ready code, header slideshow and other cool features."
Swell Lite
Photolab
Electa: "Electa is the perfect theme to display any site from your photography
portfolio, personal blog, restaurant websites, wedding sites,
entertainment websites, or any site you'd like to display your beautiful
images on. Along with the blocks layout, Electa has multiple page
layouts which work well with SiteOrigin's simple drag and drop Page
Builder, allowing you to built any type of page layout you like. Also
integrated with WooCommerce, Electa can easily turn into a full online
eCommerce store where you can sell products."
Photoshoot: "Photoshoot is a clean and modern WordPress responsive theme which is
mainly designed for Photographers who want to showcase their portfolio
of photo shoots. But this can be suited to individual freelancers and
small and mid sized companies too which want to showcase their portfolio
using images."
Verge
Veal
Customizr
Blackoot: "An Elegant, Multi-purpose, Responsive WordPress Theme. Perfect for
photography or music oriented blogs as well as portfolio and creative
business websites. It features two widgetizable areas in the sidebar and
the optional footer, two custom menu locations in the navbar and
footer, optional tagline display, custom logo and favicon, custom header
image and custom background."
Puro: "A content focused minimalist theme, perfect for your blog, portfolio or
small business site. We've closely integrated SiteOrigin's Page Builder
for responsive layouts and Meta Slider for smooth, easy to build
sliders. Puro is responsive, Retina-ready and fully compatible with
Jetpack, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms and WP PageNavi. Included is a
.rtl CSS file for right to left languages."
Stained Glass
Panaroma
SG Window
Sketch: "A clean, responsive portfolio theme with options for a custom site logo,
a featured content slider, and lots of room to share your work."
Illustratr: "A minimalist portfolio theme."
Pictorico: "A single-column, grid-based portfolio theme with large featured images
and a post slider, perfect for photoblogging or a portfolio site."
Gridster: "Gridster
is a tidy little portfolio theme for photographers and creative types.
It has a grid-based homepage, left sidebar and space to show off your
images in style. The theme is responsive so it will look good on every
screen, from mobiles and tablets up to large desktop displays. Now
upload your own logo via the theme customizer."
Portfolio Press: "Portfolio
Press is a responsive theme for showcasing your photography, art, web
sites, or other projects. It also works nicely as a regular blog site.
Configuration options are available in the customizer."
fPhotography: "a fully Responsive WordPress Theme, a perfect choice for a website or
blog about photography, photographer, or photo shooting. Features
include Multi-Level Drop-Down Header Menu, Admin Customize Options
(Slider Images and Content, Header Logo and Footer Copyright Text),
Multiple Browser Compatible (IE9, IE10, IE11, Chrome, Firefox, Opera,
and Safari), FontAwesome Integration, Sidebar Widget Area, W3C Markup
Validated, Search Engine Optimized (SEO), Mobile-Friendly, and
Translation Ready."
Photo Perfect: "Photo Perfect is a responsive photography WordPress Theme for
professional photographer, photo bloggers and creative peeps. Theme is
very easy to customize, maintain and use on a daily basis."
Wiles
Silvia: "Silvia is a light, bright and beautiful photography WordPress theme.
It’s ideal for website focused on photography, graphic design, fashion,
art, architecture, interior design, and other creative fields! Key
features are responsive, retina support, fast load and SEO friendly with
Schema.org markup. The theme options are powered by easy-to-use
Customizer, allows you to modify various options including colors,
typography, layout, etc. It also smoothly integrated with Jetpack and
Polylang plugin."
Willow: "This theme extend default theme "Twenty Sixteen".In PC views,this theme
exchange the article page columns in one column from two columns, and
Photos in black and white."
Resi: "Resi is a clean gallery theme which showcases beautiful picture
collections for all photographers. Resi is responsive, retina ready, and
perfect for high resolution photo collections. Easy to use, it's as
simple as adding posts with Image post formats"
Gazette: "A
clean and flexible theme perfectly suited for minimalist magazine-style
sites, personal blogs, or any content-rich site. It allows you to
highlight specific articles on the homepage, and to balance readability
with a powerful use of photography — all in a layout that works on any
device."
Patio
Coherent
Argent: "Argent
is a clean and modern portfolio theme, geared towards creative
professionals like designers, artists, and photographers. With its
simple homepage template featuring portfolio projects, Argent aims to
draw viewers right at what matters most: your wonderful work."
Kouki: "A
beautiful and minimal theme for personal blogs. Kouki is meant for
publishers who like to display their content in a delightful and minimal
way. Ideal for food blogs, photographers, minimalists, tumble logs and
everyone else who likes an unobtrusive WordPress theme. Non-mandatory
theme options help you to individualize the theme. Change colors, choose
fonts from the Google library and add social icons. The theme is
responsive and looks good on small devices."
Bose
Family
Careta
Pinnacle
GK Portfolio: "If you’re a photographer, designer or creative blogger, you know how
much of an impact strong visuals can have. It’s not enough to just write
about your skills, or talk about what works in design; it has to be
seen to be understood. With the clean, elegant design offered by this
free Portfolio WordPress theme that puts all the emphasis on your
creative work, you can craft an alluring, attractive and relaxed website
that echoes the qualities that you put into your writing and images.
Reveal and hover animations provide a dynamic backdrop without
intrusion, and the dialed-back layout keeps attention focused on your
content. Provide your blog or portfolio site with the perfect foundation."
Masonry: "Our Masonry theme is based on the popular and efficient grid library, suitable for creatives, photographers or bloggers.
Radcliffe: "A theme for bloggers who want their content to take center stage.
Radcliffe features responsive design, retina-ready assets, full width
header images, beautiful design and typography, support for custom logo,
support for custom accent color, three widget areas, editor style and
translation-ready code. Included translations: Swedish/svenska."
Princess Lite: "Princess
is a clean, modern, resposnive and retina ready WordPress theme by
ThemePrince. Features: columns, 2 blog templates, selectable sidebar
position, logo and favicon uploader, RTL support, translation ready."
Freedom: "Freedom is a simple, clean and responsive stylish photo blogging theme.
The theme supports custom header, custom background, custom menu, widget
areas and has built-in options panel to configure primary color, site
logo, slider, site layout, sidebar layout, category layout and many
more."
Adventurous
PhotoStory
Stacker Lite: "Stacker is a Grid-Based theme for showing off your photos and images.
Includes a social media links menu to display icons linking to your
favourite social media sites. Customize the colors and amount of
columns via the Cutomizer."
Phogra: "This is what a photography portfolio should be about: showing off your
photography skills through the display of large photos. So we focused on
that and we added a nice little menu to wrap things together."
Radar: "Radar is an awesome, full of modern, flat-style, colorful,
clean, responsive WordPress theme. Use it to make something cool, have
fun."
Zerif Lite: "a free one page WordPress theme. It's perfect for web
agency business,corporate business,personal and parallax business
portfolio, photography."
Optimizer: "It's perfect for any types of website - Landing Pages, small business,
portfolio, photography, corporate, personal & eCommerce websites."
Lens
Freak
BiancaA
Planum: "Responsive
full screen theme for bloggers. The choice of color, background image,
custom header images and other settings using the WordPress Customizer
with a live preview. Square tiles grid for the home page and blog posts.
Has built-in context help. Ready Jetpack infinite scroll."
Olevia: "Olevia is a portfolio and blogging theme with a beautiful home page to
show off your work. If you're looking for something simple to set up
your portfolio site, this theme is for you."
One Paze: "Beautifully designed modern WordPress theme. It is one page Parallax
layout (with ability to configure inner pages as well). It loads super
fast, built on customizer and allows you to live preview your changes as
you go. Highly configurable and high level of compatibility with major
WP plugins."
Cubic
Yuuta
Zifer Child
Touchfolio: "Free responsive portfolio WordPress theme with touch navigation."
Tempera: "We had to follow a very strict recipe to get Tempera just right. We
started with a very solid framework of over 200 settings, added a very
light user interface, threw in a couple of mobiles and tablets to give
it that responsive elasticity, added over 50 fonts, weren't satisfied so
we poured all the Google fonts into the mix, then scattered 12 widget
areas for consistency, dissolved a slider and unlimited columns into a
customizable Presentation Page then mixed it in as well. We then
sprinkled all post formats, 8 layouts including magazine and blog,
powdered 40+ social icons and even blended in a customizable top bar for
extra density. We also made it translation ready and gave it RTL
language support for some cultural diversity. The secret ingredient was
love and we might've spilled too much of that. But now Tempera has just
the right feel and the right texture and is exactly what your empty
WordPress canvas needs. NEW! Tempera now comes in 16 different flavors
with preset color schemes!"
Azeria
Hitchcock
Maker
Digest: "Digest is a free WordPress theme for your personal blogs
or portfolio. Theme supports widgets and custom menus. Ideal for
photographers, designers and anyone who wishes to show off their work."
How to Make Your Online Photography Portfolio
In this lesson from the course The Photographer's Portfolio, Chamira Young takes a look at a handful of web photography
portfolios and discusses the effective elements and best practices behind their
assembly.
Portfolios
Which Type of Photography Portfolio Should You Use?
Chamira Young
Portfolios
10 Steps for Building a Photography Portfolio to Be Proud Of
Simon Bray
WordPress
How to Organize Your Photos in WordPress With WP Real Media Library
Andrew Childress
Portfolios
How to Create a PDF Portfolio in Adobe Lightroom
Jeffrey Opp
Photo Editing
How to Assess and Edit Your Photographs
Amy Touchette
Writing
How to Write an Artist Statement and Why It’s So Important
Amy Touchette