Photographers looking to sell photos online and showcase work in a portfolio-style website – this post is for you! We’ve rounded up a comprehensive list of beautiful photography WordPress themes.
Great photography websites are one of the true joys of the modern internet. They offer a platform for creative amateurs and professionals alike to broadcast their work in ways that prior generations could only dream about. With very little cost and a minimum commitment of time you can setup and launch a beautiful photography portfolio website that rivals any online.
More Than a Portfolio
Sometimes just showcasing your work is not enough and you may find that you need to be able to sell your prints, stock photography or commissions. Increasingly these eCommerce features are easy to achieve using simple plugins like wooCommerce or hybrid systems like Cart66, which makes almost any sales model possible.
Included Features
When designing a WordPress photography site, one of the hardest tasks is to consider all the different ways users will want to display their content. Many authors have used this as the basis for their theme features, including value-adds such as multiple portfolio and gallery layouts, extensive customization features, full-screen slideshows, and background images.
Best Photography Themes for Highlighting Your Work
Here are some of the very best themes for you to check out.
Weston
The Weston theme provides all the important features you’d need to run a successful modern photography website. It comes with full-featured portfolios that include multiple layout options, animations, hover effects, galleries, and more. If you need to sell your photography merchandise, the template provides eCommerce features to set up an online shop.
In addition, you’ll find 12 homepage layouts to choose from, stunning Parallax backgrounds, slideshow modules, a user-friendly page builder, and different customization options to make the theme your own. And if you ever get stuck, professional support is only a few clicks away.
Freedom
Freedom Pro is a beautiful premium WordPress photography theme by Themegrill. The frontpage features a large attractive full-width slider to welcome your visitors with your amazing photography and drive them further into your site. The homepage’s bottom section highlights your blog posts with large banners that spruce up the design and add depth to the page content.
If you’d like to try different styles, this theme’s blog comes with various different layouts including with left or right sidebar, full width with no sidebar, or no sidebar with your content centred. In addition, you’ll find advanced typography and multiple color options so you can tune the template to match your brand or style. Last but not least, the Freedom Pro theme is optimized to load fast and integrates nicely with social media, making it easy for people to follow you and share your photos.
Shutter
Shutter is a premium photography template designed for photo studios, photographers, photo bloggers, and designers.
This WordPress theme comes integrated with 5 unique pre-built demos which you can use to present your works and projects in an exquisite way. It includes a set of professional features and options; you can change colors, typography, fonts, sizes and much more. Shutter comes with lots of sliders, menus, buttons – you will find all the components you need for an outstanding online presence.
Underwood
Photography is one of the most creative forms of visual art. That means your photography site should feature a unique, original look. Underwood is among the few WordPress themes that meet this demand. There are three variations of the home page where each variety features an attractive content slider and relies heavily on using images.
Underwood supports nine post formats, including a gallery post and two variations for gallery banner post. These post formats will be effective for showcasing your photo collection in different ways. You can use custom widgets to show a search bar, details about your business, social media profiles, links to the latest or featured posts, archive, and categories on the sidebar or footer.
Since most people connect to the Internet from their mobile devices, it is crucial that your website works perfectly on mobile devices. Luckily, Underwood comes with a mobile-friendly design. That means your photography site will look great on any screen size and resolution.
Shasta
The basic purpose of a photography website is to display photographs in an attractive way. You need to choose a specialized template like Shasta to achieve that goal.
There are four unique styles for the homepage layout. Each of these layouts makes heavy use of images, which means you can create your website with any of these designs. The supported post types include three specially developed types for stylishly displaying your photos. The mobile-ready theme also allows you to choose your own font, color, and other styles.
Do you have an international audience? If that is the case, your website should be available in other languages as well. Luckily, Shasta comes in a translation-ready form, enabling you to create photography sites in other languages too. Full WooCommerce compatibility enables you to sell photos directly from your website.
The extensive documentation will help you get started with various features of Shasta. In case you need additional help, the professional support team will always be there for you.
ePhoto
The ePhoto WordPress theme option is a popular theme since it sticks to the basics and doesn’t try to get too flashy. Most of the focus is put on your photos and not the bells and whistles that are included with the theme. It’s developed by the folks at Elegant Themes and it helps you turn your regular blog into a full-fledged photo gallery website; with featured thumbnails, gallery navigation, and even some filtering tools to help visitors find the content they are interested in. The blog is completely customizable and it’s a nice way to provide a lot of value to your visitors while boosting your search engine rank at the same time.
The complete localization of the ePhoto theme means your website can easily be translated into another language. The theme also includes two unique color schemes. The theme is completely responsive and the shortcodes make it easy to add items like content boxes and buttons. Page templates range from gallery pages to contact pages and can easily be changed with a click of a button. Along with a quick logo upload, several widget areas, and a module to feature your team members, the ePhoto theme is a great theme to consider.
DeepFocus
DeepFocus is a classic photo-forward business theme that would make an ideal photography portfolio or creative agency website. It offers a clean set of front page modules that include a photographic portfolio and large image slideshow. The theme can be instantly transformed using any one of the five color skins so you’ll be able to fit the theme to the branding and aesthetic of your business. As with all Elegant Themes products, DeepFocus ships with a powerful theme options panel that will allow you to modify fonts, colors, and layouts with a few simple clicks of the mouse.
Wynn
Wynn is a beautiful, creative portfolio theme that offers responsive, full-screen minimalism alongside a high-quality user experience. It will work perfectly for creative agencies, creative freelancers, photographers, artists or anyone who needs a website with a photo-forward design. Wynn is carefully crafted in HTML5 and advertises an all-AJAX loading. The theme is packaged with Revolution slider and supports over 500 Google fonts, so you’ll be able to transform the design into one that perfectly fits your personal or professional aesthetic.
eClipse
The eClipse theme from Mad Dog is a beautiful photography portfolio theme for WordPress that offers a range of layouts to make your creative work stand out. Choose from fullscreen image/video backgrounds, a Ken Burns gallery, fullscreen Ken Burns gallery, fullscreen grid portfolio, fullscreen grid/masonry photo gallery, fullscreen image slider, striped image page, fullscreen masonry portfolio or a fullscreen blog. It offers several distinct color options including a light and dark skin to instantly transform your photography portfolio.
Darkroom
Darkroom is a modern and clean photography theme from ThemeForest who has produced a string of fantastic looking photo-based layouts for WP. This theme comes with a wide array of layout options including a full-screen image/slideshow layout that looks fantastic. It would be a perfect fit for graphic designers, shutterbugs, or any creative. Because this is such a flexible theme, it would work equally well for a wedding, business or personal websites.
Noah
Noah is the perfect theme for photographers wanting to take a risk and stray from the norm. With its bold visual approach and use of animated transitions, your site visitors will be thrilled to engage with your content and see everything you have to offer. Build your site organically and monitor every section closely in the live preview area so you know your site is just right. In addition, choose from Noah’s flexible color scheme and make your site match your brand and personality.
Built with accurate code for optimal speed and performance, Noah also comes multi-language ready (with the popular WPML translation plugin), is SEO friendly, and is full of social opportunities to share and get shared. In the end, this playful and modern photography theme is a great option for those who like to work outside of the box.
Oshin
The Oshin theme is another multi-purpose, multi-layout WordPress theme available through ThemeForest. The theme has 15 layouts that are easily installed with the one-click import feature, and they give you a nice starting point for your design. Oshin offers a custom drag-and-drop page builder that makes complex column-based layouts possible without having to know any code.
Inspiro
Consider the Inspiro theme if you’d like a full-screen header to showcase your best photos. This theme has a stunning modern design with minimalist elements as you scroll down the main page. The full-screen header is actually a slideshow so you can include a wide range of photos from your collection. The widgetized homepage helps both beginners and advanced users to speed up the design process. A gallery module helps you organize your images and the text overlay in the header is great for driving visitors to your sales pages.
The Inspiro theme is completely responsive. The slideshow supports videos in case you’d like to include a welcome video on your homepage. Inspiro integrates with WooCommerce which is wonderful for photographers who are trying to sell digital or physical prints. With WooCommerce you can accept PayPal and credit card payments and send users through a simple shopping cart. Finally, the sliding sidebar offers widget areas to add widgets for social media buttons, along with Instagram thumbnails and recent Twitter updates.
Deposito
Deposito is a modern, simple portfolio template for WordPress from ThemeShift. The theme has a responsive design and includes custom post types, shortcodes, and other great features. It is built on Frameshift framework that includes the following features: translation-ready, custom layouts, responsive, shortcodes, custom widgets, clean code, easy updates, and an extensive options panel.
Hiker
Hiker is a great choice if you want to create a unique website that’s sure to make a lasting impression on potential clients. The theme features a drag-and-drop page builder, customizable homepage grid, and more. This photography theme for WordPress would look great for any portfolio project. It integrates with some of the most popular WP plugins like Visual Composer and is translation-ready, SEO optimized, and includes design files.
Delayed
Delayed from ThemeShift is a free full-width, blog-style portfolio and photography theme for WordPress that is well-suited for creatives. It uses the Post Formats option to create dynamic content and also includes custom shortcodes, widgets and more. Delayed is a simple, modern WordPress theme that comes with a beautiful blog style and allows you to enhance the overall look and feel with a few clicks of your mouse.
Mercury Theme
Mercury is a responsive and Retina-ready photography theme for WordPress. With six different portfolio layouts and 20 gallery templates, it is versatile enough for a variety of websites. This theme is translation ready with WooCommerce plugin support. You can choose from light/dark skin presets to make it easier to customize, and then you can use the advanced theme customization to change specific elements/headings/button colors throughout the site. A drag-and-drop page builder makes it easy to produce highly customized web pages and the hidden mobile navigation keeps users focused on the most important aspects–your content.
Verticality
Verticality is a one-page, responsive theme with side navigation and multiple slideshows; it’s a great choice for anyone who wants a simple yet attractive website. Fun, eye-catching animation effects are used throughout the site to make transitions enjoyable, and you can create multiple slideshows for your main page. Post formats are used to further enhance content, including standard, galleries, video, and audio post.
Cesar
Cesar is a beautiful, simple photo theme for WordPress featuring 15 gallery templates and 6 portfolio templates, WooCommerce support, and Retina-ready graphics. The LayerSlider Plugin is included with the theme, allowing you to create beautiful slideshows. If you need any help along the way, there are video tutorials and documentation is provided. Extensive portfolios and galleries make this theme worth checking out!
Photo Artist
One of the most popular, original photography themes for WordPress, PhotoArtist from ThemeFuse features full-width banners, built-in page templates, and an auto-slide option for the frontpage slider. There is also the option for a full-scale blog to be used alongside your portfolio of images as well.
My Folio
My Folio offers a creative, visual front page layout that shows a variety of featured photos, tweets, blog posts, slider, and page excerpts such as About Me and Contact. There are some fun animations between page transitions, which add a fun visual appeal. My Folio is great for photographers looking to bootstrap their own site or other creatives who want to manage their portfolio. It also includes YouTube/Vimeo embed support, a cascading blog/gallery style layout, and unlimited color options.
Camilla
Camilla is a beautiful WordPress template for photographers and creatives that gives you ample room to showcase your work. A horizontal scroll will make your site stand out from the crowd, and the template is completely widgetized with customizable portfolios, unique page navigation, and more. The theme also includes various preset skins, making it easy to customize it to match your brand and style.
Keres
Keres gives you a great canvas to display your work with. The theme includes a video background option, admin panel, and social media sharing among other features. With 10 gallery templates and 3 different portfolio templates, you can create a unique website. Social sharing is included via the popular AddThis plugin to make your content go viral in seconds. Shortcodes, videos, full-screen image backgrounds on posts or pages, and a menu that hides with the click of a mouse are just some of the key features that make Keres a WordPress photography and portfolio theme worth looking at.
Tripod
Tripod is a simple and stunning theme that’s sure to impress anyone who visits your website. The theme includes fun animation effects, WooCommerce support, Retina-ready and responsive design, multiple galleries, and more. It also includes a drag-and-drop page builder to make it even easier to manipulate content directly on the page. Multiple layouts include list, grid, timeline and masonry views, and with the awesome WooCommerce integration, you can turn this photo blog theme into a photography eCommerce site in a matter of minutes. Custom post types and pages are included such as testimonials, team members, availability calendar, and contact form.
Coastline
The Coastline photography WordPress theme is one of the prettiest options you can choose from on this list since it offers a unique grid layout for displaying your photos. The portfolio content type ensures that you can turn your entire homepage into a beautiful presentation of your past work. Flexible layout options work nicely for adding variety to your website. Jetpack support is always a bonus and the custom widgets help you incorporate social networking buttons, content modules, and more.
The navigation menu has been pushed to the left-hand side, allowing your content to shine. It also has an aesthetically pleasing background image for your menu that you can replace with any other photo of your choice. Label all of the photos or categories you feature on the homepage and try out the shortcodes so you don’t have to mess around with the source code.
Eames
The idea behind the Eames theme is to generate a stunning, minimalist portfolio website for artists, photographers, and designers. You can choose between a large or thumbnail portfolio view and the image captions help in grabbing the attention and encouraging visitors to click through to view the details about a project. Edit the size of your menu and scale your images so you don’t have to worry about resizing them before uploading them to your site. Feel free to create an unlimited amount of images, portfolios, and pages, and edit the font color and copyright notice.
The built-in blog helps you build your audience, and the Google Fonts integration allows you to easily customize the typography. The one-click logo upload allows both images and HTML logos. Gallery descriptions work well for adding information about the type of photography you do and the WooCommerce support assists in setting up an online store to sell your own items.
Vertex
The Vertex WordPress theme is a stunning theme with the functionality that allows you to share your story with galleries, sliders, and testimonials. Several places feature clear call-to-actions, which are great for those photographers who are looking to build their client base. The secure and valid code includes localization support, which helps with the translation of your website. You can choose from an unlimited amount of colors to create a website that matches your brand. The responsive design ensures that your website looks great on smaller devices such as phones and tablets, while theme options allow you to build a professional looking website without the need to touch any code.
Vertex comes with various shortcodes, which are handy if you don’t have coding knowledge and want to add elements like buttons or columns. The page templates allow you to make specific pages like contact forms, blogs, login pages, and galleries. The huge header image takes up most of the screen space and it has a Parallax effect that allows you to add overlaying text and buttons to direct visitors to your portfolio or certain projects. Showcase your recent client projects in a beautiful portfolio and even feature team members if you’re running a photography studio with multiple people.
Divi
Divi is one of the most popular WordPress themes on the market because you can quickly modify it to satisfy the needs for any type of business. In terms of photography, Divi works rather well. The Divi Builder is a drag-and-drop editor with powerful tools for advanced users and beginners alike. Simply drag items called Divi modules into the layout editor to create anything from sliders to pricing pages. Several premade layouts provide you with a nice starting point for your design and the responsive design makes it easy to view your site on mobile devices.
When you go with the Divi theme you receive 40 content modules. Some of the modules include support for galleries, images, tabs, social media buttons, sidebars, and maps. Each module has its own unique settings for modifying the way you want it to look before activating it on your site. And if you know your way around the code, you can easily make more advanced customization with the custom CSS option. Overall, Divi is a great choice for photographers because you can quickly set up a portfolio and include other handy information like a booking page, contact information, and promotions.
Portfolio
Check out the Portfolio WordPress theme if you want to make your portfolio look amazing. This responsive theme includes a minimal portfolio with a lot of elements and custom widgets for showcasing your portfolio and making it look awesome. AJAX loading allows your website to load quickly. The advanced portfolio filters allow potential clients to see work specific to their needs. On top of that, you can change the layout of your portfolio and can have a different number of columns, which allows you to organize your content in an elegant fashion.
Change your image sizes from the WordPress dashboard and generate a clean blog layout to grow your audience and increase your search engine rankings. The Retina-ready font icons will allow you to add extra visual appeal to your website and over 630 Google Fonts let you customize the fonts on your website and add additional flair. Social media integration is great for building your social media presence, and the portfolio navigation buttons are essential for keeping people on the right track. The Portfolio theme has mega-menu functionality and the unlimited color and background options pair with the custom widgets and parallax blog posts to make this one of the more creative photography themes for you to choose from.
Vignette
The Vignette WordPress theme is an impressive theme that’s perfect for photographers, models, or anyone else who needs lots of images on their website. The theme includes a beautiful portfolio, along with a large header that supports high-resolution images. The header also has options for overlaying elements, so you could implement a button or text module to serve as a call to action. This works great if you have a new product or service you’d like to sell or if you need to start collecting email addresses from followers. The theme is completely responsive. This is especially important for anyone relying on their website to bring in clients who may use their phones or tablets to view your website. Additionally, several widgets are included with the WordPress theme, making it easy to set up social media profiles and feeds like Flickr.
The Vignette translation tools allow you to translate the website and reach a global audience. One thing to keep in mind is that the header module takes up the majority of the screen and it allows you to add videos if you’d like to stand out from the crowd. Social media buttons can be placed in the footer to connect with people on places like Facebook and Twitter. Overall, the Vignette theme is one of the hottest options out there and it gives you all the tools to build a stunning online presence.
Gleam
The Gleam theme combines elegance and simplicity, using a large, full-screen image to grab the attention right from the start. Unlike most portfolio themes, you can only place one image on the homepage. A website title and description are the only other elements on the homepage, but when the users scroll over the logo or title, a navigation menu appears. Constructing your menu only takes a few minutes and you can even have a blog with beautiful post formats. This allows you to add a variety of different posts to your blog. Many of these blog posts will serve as portfolio items, with descriptions and featured images to add all the important details about your projects. The theme is also fully responsive.
Galleries are possible, but the portfolio is what makes Gleam unique. Once someone navigates to one of the pages on your website, the menu is moved to the bottom of the page. This cleans up the interface, yet still makes it easy to navigate the website. Clicking through the portfolio only takes one click since small thumbnail images are revealed towards the bottom. Considering all of the portfolio items are enlarged to full-screen size, this is one of the most impressive themes for those who would really like to include high-resolution images.
Beluga
Beluga is one of the most user-friendly and feature-rich photography WordPress themes; this theme doesn’t look or function like a WordPress theme at all. With an impressive array of customization options, front-end photo management system, and visual homepage editor, PhotoTheme’s Beluga photography theme is probably one of the most unique themes available in the WordPress ecosystem. Using Beluga feels like using a supercharged version of WordPress.
It is the first and only WordPress theme to have a front-end album management system. You can upload photos, delete photos, create albums, edit/delete albums, add descriptions and more through an intuitive front-end user interface. It also has the easiest slider, fastest lightbox gallery, and several other photography related features.
Skywalker
The Skywalker theme is a clean, responsive theme with a homepage slider for including shots of your favorite images. Customize the filterable portfolio so your potential clients have an easy way to see the work most relevant to their needs. The built-in shortcodes are always handy for beginners who don’t know how to code and for developers who simply want to make the client website creation process go a little faster.
Social media support is ideal growing your social media following and it also helps visitors share the content you post online. The AJAX contact form makes it easy for potential clients to get in touch with you about a custom project while the Google Maps module lets you provide directions to your physical location.
Reveal
The Reveal theme is responsive and clean, using a grid format to reveal your portfolio in an organized manner. The theme is AJAX powered which means your photos will load fast as well as look beautiful. Custom widgets allow you to easily link to your social media accounts and the logo upload is quick and easy.
The portfolio is completely filterable for easy navigation and hundreds of Google Web Fonts allow you to customize your fonts. Video support is handy if you plan on posting any Vimeo or YouTube videos and button shortcodes help you keep your hands free of any code.
Epix
When it comes to photography WordPress themes, the Epix theme is in a class of its own. It has a fullscreen layout, which is ideal for photographers and people who work with visuals. Not to mention it has an unlimited number of color skins which make it easy to integrate your brand seamlessly with your website. The incredible number of features includes a responsive design which ensures your website will look great on all screen sizes. The full-screen module is truly the best part since it allows you to upload a high-resolution image to showcase your photography skills.
You can easily customize your content with a live editor, which is perfect for those want to see the changes as they make them without having to refresh the page. On top of that, the theme includes Visual Composer plugin which lets you tweak the layout of any page with a drag-and-drop interface. The basis of the plugin is that you don’t have to touch any source code which is great for beginners. Several photo settings are provided such as the lazy loading feature for all of your images, which means that the photos don’t load up until the user scrolls over them. This is essential for keeping your site speeds in check, while also allowing you to have the highest resolution photos on your site.
Photex Photography Theme
We have removed this review becuase this theme is discontinued.
Djazz
We have removed this review becuase this theme is discontinued.
Cinch
We have removed this review becuase this theme is discontinued.
Brutal
We have removed this review becuase this theme is discontinued.
RokoPhoto
We have removed this review becuase this theme is discontinued.
T I Antor
January 19, 2017 at 5:37 pmFinding a perfect theme for my friend’s photography website, I was being irritated for 2 days. Finally, I got one here what I actually looking for. Thank you for picking and packing all these photography themes on a page here. I am sure no one will need to go here and there to get a great theme for his photography website.
Katie Keith
April 25, 2017 at 9:39 amSome impressive looking themes here, thanks! It’s always a nightmare choosing the right WordPress photography theme as there are just so many out there. This is a really good starting point and will save me a lot of time!
It’s great that you’ve included some WooCommerce themes in the list, as lots of photographers need to sell their photos online. Your readers will be interested in a tutorial I’ve just published about how to use WooCommerce to create a photography website. The steps in the tutorial will work with all the WooCommerce themes you’ve listed. It includes all the features that photographers need, such as how to create hidden categories to securely sell photos to each client. You can read it at https://barn2.co.uk/woocommerce-photography-plugins.
Sarah Bishop
May 3, 2017 at 3:27 pmThanks, Katie!