Please Note: We receive referral commissions from many of the WordPress theme shops listed below.
More than a list of great WordPress themes for photographers, this is like a resource page for photographers interested in WordPress. Obviously, we’ve sorted through the top WordPress photography themes. We also strive to keep this list up-to-date. So as the major WordPress theme shops release new themes, we’ll add, delete, and adjust this page. For each of these photography themes, we’ve provided a “mini-review” covering what you need to know.
So what you’ll find below is an up-to-date, edited list of the best WordPress photography themes plus mini-reviews.
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UPDATED FOR 2013.
Photocrati
Photocrati is one of the most popular makers of WordPress photography themes. Photocrati’s designs emphasize big, bold images and come with gallery management and ecommerce built-in.Photocrati also has a lot going on:
- 60+ Styles in One: Photocrati comes with 60+ styles built-in.
- Built-in Gallery Management: Photocrati comes with true gallery management seamlessly built in.
- Now with ECOMMERCE: Photocrati is the only WordPress theme that offers ecommerce galleries.
60+ styles are built into Photocrati, including the following (click for demos):
2. Landscape
Landscape is a basic but solid photography WordPress theme from StudioPress, one of the oldest and leading providers of WordPress themes. Most of their themes target small businesses, but they have a few targeting photographers, including the classic-style Landscape.
3. Pixel Happy
Pixel Happy is an attractive one-column photo blogging theme of the style that’s now popular among wedding and portrait photographers. But you can do a lot with it. As a matter of fact, this theme is based on Pixel Happy! As you can see from the site you’re reading, it’s not a classic-style photography website, but it’s great for showcasing large images in blog posts.
4. Deep Focus
Deep Focus is a beautiful and stylish photography theme from Elegant Themes, one of the leading theme makers. They have a few other photo blogging themes, but this is the most photographer-friendly of their offerings.
5. PhotoNexus
PhotoNexus is a standby from the ThemeForest marketplace. It’s got a solid look that’s a bit more modern than most themes but a bit more conservative than many of the themes below.
6. Invictus
Invictus is one of the edgiest photo WordPress themes in our list. With a full width background image, bottom filmestrip, and front page text box, it’s got a cool look to go along with it’s coold name.
7. Village
Village is a very stylish and modern style photographer theme with a side-style menu and large, striking image. Like many of the themes here, it’s elements seem to come together just right.
8. Anan
Anan is a beautiful theme. Like many of the newer generation of WordPress photography themes, it offers a full screen image background. It uses a unique translucent black screen to house content.
9. Statua
Statua is a basic but nice looking photography WordPress theme from Woo Themes, long one of the dominant WordPress theme makers. They have not had a strong focus on photo themes, and this is one of their first true photographer-focused efforts.
10. Core Minimalist
Core is a simple yet beautifully minimalist design with a nice gallery that looks great as it stretches across wide screens and flows through images.
11. Photorific
Photorific is another beautiful theme for photogaphers with a striking design with full screen background image and side-style menu.
12. MediaReel
Mediareel is a cool WordPress theme for photographers that comes with a striking and clean full size image background and pop-out menu.
13. Chocolate
Chocolate is a very sophisticated and stylish full width WordPress theme with an image background. As with many of the theme listed here, Chocolate underscores how far WordPress designers are moving from conventional “blog” design toward truly rich website design that no longer looks like WordPress at all.
14. PhotoPurePress
A solid photo WordPress theme with classic-style top with a large image, but with a series of gallery images and a nice footer area below.
15. Kin
We like Kin. It’s a very unique design that comes together and just feels right. It’s got a wide orientation with a sidebar-style menu and images that stretch across the screen.
16. Specere
Specere is a beautifully styled WordPress photography theme with a full-screen background image that wow’s visitors.
17. Photoland
Photoland is a very basic but solid photography theme with a basic home page layout with large image and thumbnails. It doesn’t have the style of some of the themes below, but places the emphasis on the images.
18. Zoom
Zoom is a sleek photo gallery WordPress theme with cutting-edge style. It’s got a full width background image that fills the screen regardless of size.
19. Galleria
Galleria is an elegant theme for photographers with a nicely styled sidebar-style menu along side a classic-style gallery.
20. Viewfinder
Viewfinder is a full width photo theme that conveys a rich collection of photos directly from the home page with lots of small thumbs (rather than one large image).
We assume many of you are familiar with WordPress. But we also know many photographers are new to WordPress and have limited experience in general building or managing their own websites. If that’s you, there are a few other things you should know before you dive in.
If you are a photographer who’s new to WordPress or managing your own site, you should know that compared to other “photography website template” companies, the WordPress themes require that you manage your own site. You should be comfortable (or willing to learn) setting up a hosting account, installing WordPress, uploading files to your site via FTP, backing your site up, etc. If you’re not, you can consider WordPress.com. You easily set up a hosted WordPress blog without all the hassle. But it comes with drawbacks: you can’t use the themes below since their system doesn’t allow you to upload your own themes.
Finally, a note on WordPress and photo galleries. WordPress is originally a blogging platform. It’s not designed as a general website platform, much less designed with photography in mind. As a result, it does NOT come with a built in gallery management system. It’s relatively easy to upload individual images, but it’s not easy to upload, manage, and edit galleries. This goes for many WordPress photography themes – many do NOT have a gallery management system even when they look like they do. Instead, they are photo blogging platforms. You upload an image to a post, and then the front page displays a list of those images. When you click on the image, you go to the blog post. So what looks like a gallery is actually a compilation of individual blog posts. That means you need to go to each post separately to remove/edit images.
If you are looking for a WordPress theme with photo gallery management, you need to look carefully at what you’re buying.