You’re a photographer and you’re looking to expand your online photography business with a new look which reflects your professional style! Considering the vast array of WordPress photography themes on the market these days, sifting through options can be time-consuming work, particularly if you’re not familiar with nuances between them.
Thankfully, we’re here to help you choose! We’ve been making world-class WordPress themes for the last ten years so know what you should look for. We’ll run through some important factors to consider when considering the best WordPress themes for photographers, and then showcase our handpicked selection of the best WordPress themes for photographers available today.
What to Think About When Choosing Your WordPress Photography Theme
Here are some key points you should consider when choosing the most suitable photograghy theme for your online portfolio. They’re also features we took into account when creating our selection of the 20+ best WordPress themes for photographers:
- Responsive layouts and formatting: Given that we browse across multiple devices and your site is going to be highly visual, responsive design should come as standard with any theme worth its salt in 2023.
- Clean design: Another essential component for highly visual WordPress photography themes. Look out for well laid-out portfolio sections which are easy to navigate.
- Integrated features: You’re looking for a theme which includes streamlined features, such as integrated contact forms (for easier lead generation) and straightforward SEO for photos, posts and pages. However, watch out for themes, which add “photos” or “portfolio” custom post types. These extras can sometimes lock you in to one theme (making it difficult to switch to others, should you later choose to change themes).
- Streamlined code for fast-loading: All-in-one themes often contain a lot of unnecessary, “bloated” code which slows pages down. This is especially problematic for highly visual sites. Look for “lighter” themes without too many fluffy extras, wherever possible. Easy setup and pre-built layouts are helpful, too; just make sure any page builders have “integration”, not “built-in” features. The latter carries a high security risk.
- Social Media Integration: build your brand with social media integrations! Make sure it’s easy for visitors to find you on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and anywhere else you’re sharing your photos.
The Best Photography WordPress Themes for 2023
Now that you know what to look for, here are are top 20+ photography WordPress themes for 2023 and onwards.
1. Inspiro
Inspiro is, hands-down, one of the best WordPress photography themes you can find. You get huge space to show off your work, with support for videos too. You can take advantage of a pre-built photography-focused homepage design which gives you space to display individual photo sets – great for use cases like wedding photography, where you can show previous weddings.
You get full responsive design, frequent updates, and world-class support. There’s integration with popular page builder plugins so you can customize the theme exactly how you want it, and you’ll also find extensive documentation.
Inspiro is top of our WordPress photography themes list, and for good reason.
2. Eclipse
Eclipse offers a pared-down and chic, yet functional WordPress photography theme.
It’s a great fit for photographers and bloggers who want to make an impact with a minimalist look. It also includes various easy-to-add widgets to showcase images in galleries or boxes, and another unique “Image Box” which allows you to display images with text link overlays.
You get easy customization options, and even WooCommerce support to sell your images or services straight from your website.
3. Fargo
Fargo is a photography WordPress theme crafted for visual artists who want to inspire the world by showcasing their work in style.
4. Photographer
The aptly-named WordPress Photographer theme provides absolute focus on images with minimal text, including a straightforward image display with a live zoom, encouraging your audience to hone on fine details. It also includes a live photo wall feature, randomly generating a unique, highly visual homepage.
5. Noah
Noah’s bold layouts and animated displays from our friends pixelgrade provide a fully customizable experience, as well as several posting formats (blog, sliders, galleries, columns, etc.).
6. Lens
This photography WordPress theme from Pro Theme Design displays your featured photos in a beautiful grid, with extra information displayed when the user hovers over the image. You’ve then got space to share stories on the individual posts and pages. Responsive design and support have you covered.
7. Photocrati Transparency
8. Timber
9. Insight
Insight is a minimalist WordPress theme that’s perfect for photography blogs. It flawlessly combines textual content with visual content so it’s very easy to highlight specific types of posts. Moreover, the theme includes a widgetized homepage which means that any type of widgets can be added for building the layout of the page. As of responsiveness, the grid sections of the theme will perfectly adjust on any device. Plus, there are 3 color schemes available as well as many other customization options for colors, fonts, and content placement.
How to Choose a WordPress Photography Theme
There are hundreds of themes that you can use for your WordPress site. However, not all of them are ideal for a photography page. To find the right photography theme, you’ll need to know what you want to achieve with your website.
More importantly, the design should resonate with your artistic style, whether that be minimalist, eclectic, or dynamic. For example, if you take photographs of modern buildings, you might choose a theme with a contemporary look:
On the other hand, if you take colorful photos, you might want to think about choosing a minimalist design with muted colors (e.g. a white background and black text). This way, your photos will be the focal point:
Your WordPress theme should be a reflection of your work. Making the effort to choose the right design can help you build brand awareness and make your art more recognizable.
4 Key Features to Look for in a WordPress Photography Theme
Now, let’s discuss four key features to look for in a WordPress photography theme.
1. Customization Options
When choosing a photography theme, you’ll want to make sure that it has plenty of customization options. This way, you can design a truly unique page for your portfolio.
For example, you’ll want to have different options for displaying images on your site. Photo galleries can help you present your work in engaging ways.
There are several kinds of galleries available, including grids, slideshows, and carousels. Each of these styles will enable you to display your art in an organized layout while showing the scope of your work at a glance.
Our Inspiro PRO theme comes with a built-in gallery for your homepage:
With your gallery at the forefront, you can organize images so that potential clients can see your work as they navigate to your page. Other customization options to consider include multiple photo formats within posts, caption styles, and background images.
2. SEO-Friendly Features
Creating a dynamic portfolio won’t do you much good if people aren’t able to find it. That’s why it’s important to ensure that your page is optimized for SEO. This means it should be fast and lightweight.
A slow site can hurt your rankings in search engines. Therefore, you’ll want to steer clear of complex themes with a lot of code.
Additionally, the theme should be responsive and mobile-friendly. Remember that a large percentage of your visitors will be viewing your site on their mobile phones. If your pages are glitchy or disorganized, they might exit your site straight away. This will lead to a high bounce rate, which can have a negative impact on your rankings.
Our Rezzo theme is fully mobile-friendly, which means it automatically adapts to any screen:
Feel free to try different themes on your site. You can use a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test your site’s performance and see which themes slow it down and which ones help it load faster.
3. User-Friendly Navigation
Another important feature of your photography theme is user-friendly navigation. An intuitive and navigable website can improve your User Experience (UX). An uncluttered design that enables users to explore your content without being overwhelmed will help them stay on your website for longer.
Your theme should be effortless for you to navigate as well. You’ll want to get your site up and running without having to spend time figuring out how to customize your settings.
Our Reel theme comes with a simple installation process and easy customization:
Ideally, you’ll want to choose a theme that can help you create a powerful photography site, even if you don’t have any coding experience. However, your theme should also enable you to provide the best possible experience for your site visitors.
4. Compatibility With Page Builders and Plugins
It would be frustrating to choose the perfect theme for your photography portfolio, only to discover that it’s incompatible with an important plugin on your site. Plugins and page builders are tools that help you enhance and customize your pages. For example, add-ons such as WooCommerce enable you to sell your work or photography services.
Each WPZOOM theme is fully compatible with the Gutenberg block editor, as well as the Elementor page builder. These tools enable you to create a portfolio using an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface. Before you decide on a theme, you’ll want to check to make sure that it is compatible with essential tools on your site.
Which of the WordPress Photography Themes Is Right for You?
It’s now up to you to choose the theme which best shows off your photography! Take another look through the criteria at the top of this post, and then take your pick.
Here are our favorites from this post:
- Inspiro: beautiful design to show off your photography. Packed with features, including video support. This should be your first choice.
- Insight: when photography meets stories, use Insight. This mixes photos and text for a powerful combination.
Now it’s over to you! Let us know your favorite in the comments :)
Still after more themes? Consider:
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- The best WordPress recipe themes
- The best WordPress portfolio themes
- The best WordPress video themes
- The best WordPress themes for travel blogs
- The best WordPress block themes
- The best WordPress education themes
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January 17, 2019 10:06 am
Great blog post. About no 5. Fargo, it seems you mentioned Inspiro instead of Fargo in the explanation.
January 17, 2019 6:59 pm
Thanks, Kate! Fixed.