A website is essential for every photographer to get their work seen online. Building your photography website with WordPress is the best thing you can do. I know that WordPress is good for artists, because I am a digital artist and photographer myself and have built my website on WordPress. In this post, I’m reviewing the best WordPress themes for photographers that are quick to install, easy to customize, and come with all the essentials to make your photography website a success!
Whether you love taking photos in your free time or are a professional photographer, it’s essential to have your own website to showcase your work. Otherwise, it’s much harder to get your photographs seen, attract clients, and sell your images and services.
Building your photography website with WordPress is a great choice, because WordPress offers many advantages. It’s not only the most affordable option, but also the most versatile one in terms of creative freedom and functionality.
I know that WordPress is good for artists, because I am a digital artist and photographer myself and I have built my website (the one you’re on right now) on WordPress. I can guarantee that you won’t regret creating your website with WordPress. ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
Given the nature of your work as a photographer, it’s key for your website to be visually appealing. But looks aren’t everything. There’s more to it.
Your WordPress site should also be user-friendly, eCommerce-ready (to sell your work), and SEO-optimized to rank it high in Google’s search results. These are just a few of the most crucial features.
Fortunately, there are WordPress themes that come ready-made with all those features—and more, providing you with everything you need to launch your own photography website.
In this post, I'm reviewing the best WordPress themes for photographers that are quick to install, easy to customize, and come with all the essentials to make your photography website a success!
Is WordPress good for photographers?
First of all, it’s important to note that there are two different versions of WordPress. On the one side, there’s WordPress.com, which is a website builder like Squarespace, Wix, or Weebly.
→ Best Paid & Free Website Builders For Artists
Those website builders can be a great alternative for artists and photographers. However, they don’t offer the creative flexibility you’ll get with a self-hosted WordPress site. Plus, you won’t fully own your website because it’s hosted on a third-party platform that has a say in what and what not you are allowed to do.
A self-hosted WordPress site, on the other hand, is created with WordPress.org. This is the best option for any creative individual or business, and it’s what we are talking about in this post. ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
The Content Management System (CMS) at WordPress.org is the best choice to build your photography website, in my opinion, because it offers unlimited design options and a myriad of (free) plugins, extensions, and integrations to extend the functionality of your site and make it fit any website owner’s requirements.
Do you need help in building a successful photography website?
I got you covered! I have an entire guide for you to build an artist website for success that shows you everything from setting up your WordPress site, creating an online store, growing a mailing list, to starting an art blog—with a huge chapter on SEO and driving free, organic traffic to your site.
You can find out more about the e-guide here:
How to build a photography website with WordPress?
To get started, you will need to sign up for a WordPress hosting account. This will be your website’s home in the virtual world.
You will also need a domain name that users can type in their browsers to open your website, such as ginangiela.com. You can think of the domain name as the street address of your website where people can find it.
I recommend using Hostinger or Bluehost to get both WordPress hosting and a domain name. They are two of the most popular and reliable web hosting companies. I myself have hosted my WordPress site with Hostinger and I can assure you that it’s a great choice. ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
More choices: → Best Web Hosting For Artists With WordPress Sites In 2024
Once you have hosting and a domain name, all you need is get the right WordPress theme for your photography website and you are ready to go!
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What is the best WordPress theme for photographers?
Now, of course, you are asking how to choose the best WordPress theme for a photography site. Well, there are a couple of factors that you should take into account.
After all, your website should not only look good, but also be ready to work and upgradable, in case you want to add more functionality to sell your photos or offer online courses at a later point in time.
I have selected the 12 best WordPress themes for photographers on the list below with exactly these criteria in mind. Here’s what I’ve paid particular attention to:
Visual Appeal
You want your photography to leave the best impression. That’s why you need a stunning online presentation. Many of the themes I’m suggesting on my list of the 12 best WordPress themes for photographers have been made with visual creatives in mind or feature an image-driven layout out of the box.
Portfolio & E-Commerce Features
Since the main purpose of your website will be to showcase and sell your art, it’s great if the WordPress template has a ready-made portfolio page. It will save you the time of creating it yourself.
Nevertheless, it’s not a big deal to create your own portfolio gallery in case there’s no pre-designed one. Here’s how to do it: 3 Easy Ways To Create A Portfolio Gallery In WordPress.
Another key factor is e-commerce capability. If your WordPress theme lacks e-commerce functionality, you won’t be able to open your own store unless you change the theme. To avoid the hassle of switching themes, I suggest selecting a WordPress theme for your photography website that features e-commerce capability right from the start. Even if you don’t need it at the beginning.
All WordPress themes on the list below are eCommerce-ready.
Customization Options
Your photography website should match your artist brand. That’s why it’s vital that the theme offers customization options. All themes on the list are highly customizable, allowing you to align your site’s look and feel with your branding.
Page Builder Compatibility
Apart from being compatible with eCommerce plugins, all themes on the list work with the most popular page builders, such as Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, WPBakery, and Visual Composer that offer advanced design options.
Responsive Design
About half of the internet traffic comes from mobile devices. A responsive WordPress theme assures that your website is mobile-friendly and looks great on all devices.
Speed & SEO Optimization
SEO stands for search engine optimization and evidently helps you rank your website in the search results. An SEO-optimized WordPress theme includes clean code and is fast-loading, making it user-friendly and easy for search engines to crawl and index the site.
Here are some more tips for you to get your photography website’s SEO on point:
Support & Updates
It’s important to select a WordPress theme that is maintained by the developer to ensure that it is secure, regularly updated, and that you have someone to turn to in case something goes wrong!
With that being out of the way, let’s dive right into our roundup of the 12 best WordPress themes for photographers!
12 Best WordPress Themes for Photographers
OceanWP
OceanWP is a multi-purpose WordPress theme with millions of active users and a 5-star rating on WordPress.org. I am using OceanWP for my artist website—and I’m loving it!
The theme offers extensive customization options, allowing you to tailor your site to your liking and artist brand. It is optimized for SEO, fully responsive, and compatible with WooCommerce and other eCommerce and LMS (Learning Management System) plugins. That’s how I’m able to offer e-learning courses on my website, besides physical art prints and digital downloads.
OceanWP offers numerous pre-made demos that you can install with one click. Many of those demos come with all the essential pages you need for an artist website, including portfolio galleries, about and contact pages, shop, blog, and more. There’s even an OceanWP portfolio extension available with the pro version that you can use to create your portfolio pages.
Just for you to know: I’ve built my website from scratch, using Elementor, without any pre-made demo. You can do that too, but it takes more effort than simply importing one of the pre-designed demos that you just need to fill with your own content.
→ Elementor For Photographers And Artists – QUICK & EASY Page Builder
Needless to say that OceanWP also works flawlessly with other popular page builders, such as Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, and WPBakery.
If you want to learn more about this theme, take a look at my in-depth OceanWP WordPress Theme Review For Artists. To build a photography website, I particularly recommend checking out the following OceanWP templates:
1. Photo
Photo—as its name suggests—is OceanWP’s WordPress theme tailored to photographers and other visual creatives. The template is user-friendly and includes various header styles for both desktop and mobile devices, along with a customizable top bar to link your social media channels.
It comes pre-loaded with all essential pages you need for a photography website, including portfolio gallery, home page with large image displays, contact and about page. There’s even a ready-made blog with sample post pages that you can modify to suit your needs. After all, we all know that blogging is good for artists. ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
→ 7 Reasons Every Artist Should Have A Blog [*Hint: Blogging Is Profitable*]
The template is easy to install with a single click, enabling you to have your website up and running in less than an hour.
It also integrates a free WooCommerce shop and product pages, although the shop page is not yet linked in the header menu. However, you can easily add it with just one click if you wish to set up your own photography shop. In my mind, definitely one of the best WordPress themes for photographers!
2. Picture
Picture is an eCommerce template from OceanWP specifically crafted for visual artists. It comes with all the essential pages you need for showcasing your photography and selling it in your online store.
The homepage layout is designed to make a strong first impression: it beautifully displays your latest works for sale and allows you to add a brief description so visitors immediately understand what your photography is about.
In addition to highlighting your products, the homepage also features a section for your latest blog posts, allowing visitors to click through and start reading immediately. If you’re planning to start an art blog, you’ll be pleased to know that fully pre-designed blog post templates are included, ready for you to fill with your own content!
Another must-have feature for photographers is the gallery page with lightbox capability, enabling viewers to browse through your photographs in full size. As the template is made for eCommerce, you’ll get a fully functional shop out of the box, complete with individual product pages, shopping cart, checkout page, payment gateways, and much more.
3. Camera
Camera is another powerful eCommerce template from OceanWP’s WordPress theme collection. It’s tailored to creatives who work with a camera (*wink*) and consider selling their shots.
The front page provides plenty of space for your photos for sale, customer testimonials, and latest blog posts. That being said, the template also includes a pre-designed blog, equipped with everything you need to start writing about your photography.
The shop is fully set up with various product categories, which are also linked in the footer menu. Your customers can use product filters and switch between grid and list view to quickly navigate your product offer.
Additionally, the template is ready for membership sign-ups, which is ideal to offer paid premium content. Atop bar allows you to display your social media channels and shop notices, such as a discount code—a great way to attract buyers and subscribers!
While there isn’t a dedicated gallery page, the template provides plenty of opportunities to showcase your photos. If you prefer to have a separate portfolio page, you can create your own gallery or use one of the premade gallery building blocks available with Elementor’s pro version.
Astra
Astra is one of the market-leading themes in the WordPress world. Just like OceanWP, it has stellar ratings on WordPress.org and 1M+ active users. Known for being lightweight and quick to load, it offers a great user experience and is optimized for SEO.
Astra is fully compatible with WooCommerce for selling both physical and digital products, such as prints and digital files of your photos. For those focused on digital products, Astra also supports plugins like Easy Digital Downloads. Apart from that, the theme works seamlessly with Learning Management System (LMS) plugins such as LearnDash, LifterLMS, and LearnPress, which are ideal for offering online courses.
As if that wasn’t enough, Astra is compatible with all major WordPress page builders, including Elementor, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, and Divi, allowing you to customize all details of your site.
The Astra theme is available as a free and premium version. The free version provides all the essential features, while the Pro version includes advanced options, premium templates, and white-label capabilities, starting at US$49 per year.
You can be sure to have one of the best WordPress themes for your photography website when choosing Astra, because there are numerous pre-designed templates that allow you to beautifully showcase your photos, but also open an art shop with all necessary eCommerce tools.
I particularly suggest looking into the following templates:
4. Photographer
Photographer is a professional-looking WordPress theme that you cannot go wrong with as a photographer. The theme is clearly focused on displaying your portfolio in the best way possible. It offers plenty of space to showcase your photography and provide information about your work and services.
On the home page, the theme greets visitors by showing them your best work in the hero image. It’s equipped with appealing parallax effects and well-structured content blocks to provide an overview over your photography and offerings.
The portfolio page allows you to prominently display your artist logo or best artwork at the top, accompanied by a brief description. The rest of your portfolio is presented in a tiled gallery that opens into a scrollable lightbox when the viewer clicks on an image. If you prefer a masonry gallery, you can easily create one on your own using Elementor!
→ How To Add A Masonry Gallery To WordPress (Easy Step-By-Step Tutorial)
5. Artist
Artist is another of Astra’s WordPress templates specifically made for visual creatives. It’s also ideal for beginners, because it offers all the essentials for launching a website without being overwhelming.
As a matter of course, the template includes home, portfolio, about, and contact pages that you can all customize to your liking. The portfolio gallery organizes your artwork into different categories and features a “Buy Now” button, which will link to your future online store.
While a pre-designed shop is not part of the template, you can easily add one by installing WooCommerce: → Ultimate Guide To Selling Art On WordPress With WooCommerce For Artists.
On the homepage, you can showcase your best and latest work, say a blurb about your work as a photographer, and inform visitors about upcoming exhibitions. The about page provides ample space for your biography and artist statement, while the contact page makes it easy for visitors to find your studio on Google Maps, reach out to you, and follow your social media profiles.
6. Painter Artist
Painter Artist, another Astra WordPress theme for visual creatives, is perfect for displaying and selling your photography. Alongside the about and portfolio pages, the template also features a special section for promoting your upcoming exhibitions.
The homepage welcomes visitors with a large hero image that showcases your best photograph at the top, accompanied by the story behind the piece, your name, and photographic work.
With WooCommerce already set up, the pre-built shop comes with sample products that you can easily replace with your own offerings. The theme’s minimalist design provides a clean, distraction-free experience, making it easy for visitors to explore your photography website!
Ultra
Ultra is a WordPress theme with eCommerce capability that specifically tailors to small businesses. It is part of Themify’s lineup and among their top-rated themes. The theme is built for speed and performance. It loads quickly and guarantees an excellent user experience.
Ultra features multiple header styles, mega menus, 15 pre-set color options, and video backgrounds—to just name a few of the included features. Like all Themify themes, Ultra comes with the company’s own Themify page builder to custom-style your pages and make them match your branding.
Ultra is a premium theme that you can get for US$59 per year. This includes 12 builder add-ons and one year of support. For US$89, you can upgrade your plan and get access to other Themify themes.
There are 60+ pre-designed demo sites that you can import with one click. All you need to do is replace the content—and you are ready to start selling. Here’s a good one for your photography site:
7. Photography
Photography—you don’t necessarily need to look any further than the template of the same name to find the best WordPress theme for photographers from Ultra’s product range.
In fact, the template includes everything necessary for a fully featured photography website. Naturally, there’s a dedicated portfolio page that showcases your photos in a beautiful masonry gallery.
The homepage features a multi-page portfolio gallery that viewers can scroll through without being overwhelmed with your entire portfolio when entering your website. You can add an image of yourself or your best photograph and tell your visitors a few words about yourself or your photographic work.
The about page is ideal to show photos of yourself and the best picks of your portfolio, list your skills and achievements, and even show your favorite tools of the trade that you can link to affiliates to generate an additional passive income.
The contact page is complete with contact form to make it easy for visitors and clients to get in touch with you. The pre-designed footer includes a placeholder for your logo and icons for your social media channels to allow fans to connect with you across platforms.
The only thing that’s not pre-installed is a web shop. However, since Ultra is eCommerce-ready, you can install WooCommerce with one click and launch a store in a couple of minutes.
→ Ultimate Guide To Selling Art On WordPress – WooCommerce For Artists
8. Fashion
Fashion is an excellent WordPress theme for your photography site, if you choose to use Ultra. Since the template was created with fashion designers in mind, it’s optimal to showcase and sell your photographic work.
The homepage welcomes visitors with the best images of your portfolio as well as the products available in your shop. The products shown on the homepage are already linked to the shop, and you’ll find enough pre-made text areas to write some lines about yourself and the story behind your photos.
The theme’s design is clean and minimalistic; a white background and with some bold color elements can be easily matched any creative brand. The pre-designed about page is just perfect to add your artist bio and some samples of your portfolio.
The shop is complete with products, product pages, descriptions, and the possibility for your customers to add reviews. For easy navigation, shoppers can filter products according to price, popularity, most recent, etc. at one click on the drop-down filter.
Divi
Divi is another top contender for best WordPress themes for photographers. Developed by Elegant Themes, a well-known name in the WordPress community, Divi allows to practically build any kind of website without needing any coding skills. It is fully responsive, SEO-friendly, highly customizable, and ready to use right out of the box.
Divi works with popular page builders, such as Elementor or Beaver Builder. However, it’s important to note that Divi does not support WordPress’s native Gutenberg editor. Instead, it includes its own editor, also called Divi, as part of the package. That being said, Divi requires an annual license fee, which is reasonably priced and provides access to all products developed by Elegant Themes.
All Divi templates come with pre-designed shop and blog pages. However, there are no specific pre-made templates for individual product and blog post pages. But that’s not a major issue, as you can easily import one of Divi’s single page designs if you don’t want to create your own.
In fact, Divi offers over 1,900 single page designs to choose from. Additionally, it provides 260 complete website design packs, and I have selected the best ones for your photography website:
9. Photography Studio
Photography Studio is a fantastic choice for photographers, especially those who want to showcase entire projects and sell services, in addition to prints of their photographic work.
→ How To Display Art Prints For Sale Online [*6 Tips That Work*]
Besides a standard portfolio gallery, the template includes a project page for presenting photography projects consisting of multiple images. Two pre-designed service sections allow you to present any photography-related services you offer, such as photo editing, retouching, creative direction, commissions, or online courses.
There’s a contact form in the footer for clients to easily reach out to you. Like all Divi templates, Photography Studio is ready for eCommerce, although WooCommerce is not pre-installed.
10. Art Gallery
Art Gallery is a versatile WordPress template with a focus on visual artistry. Its clean and minimalist design can be easily tailored to match any photographer’s brand.
The template’s about page provides ample space to include your artist statement, mention your creative achievements, and highlight your best works. It also features a dedicated artist page where you can share your biography, display more of your photographs, and even include a video about your work.
Art Gallery is particularly suitable for photographers who hold exhibitions or need to make other announcements on their websites. It includes two pre-designed sections that you can use to promote events you take part in—or simply repurpose to showcase more of your photography!
Neve
Neve is a widely used multi-purpose WordPress theme with over 300,000 active installations. It’s an ideal choice for small businesses, bloggers, e-commerce shops using WooCommerce, and personal portfolio websites.
The theme is lightweight, fast loading, and optimized for SEO, helping to improve your website’s ranking on Google. As a matter of course, it is fully responsive, ensuring your photography website looks great on any device.
Neve comes with a minimalist design that you can easily customize to your needs, using the Gutenberg block editor or any other popular page builder like Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin, Divi.
Developed by Theme Isle, Neve comes with over 100 starter sites that are ready for import with one click. There are more than a dozen templates designed for creatives. In my view, the following template definitely has its place among the best WordPress themes for photographers, so don’t miss checking it out!
11. Photography
Photography is Neve’s WordPress theme specifically designed for photographers and other visual artists. Naturally, it has everything you need for creating a photography website. The homepage is purpose-built with a gorgeous optical layout to showcase your best work.
Apart from that, the theme includes two ready-made portfolio pages where you can display more of your artwork and add brief descriptions. There’s a placeholder for your logo in both the top and footer menu that you can easily replace it with your own logo. Colors, fonts, and other elements are customizable with just a few clicks, too.
Photography is also a great pick if you want to get into blogging, as it includes a ready-made blog with individual posts that just need to be populated with your content.
Breakthrough Pro
Breakthrough Pro by StudioPress is a minimalist WordPress theme with a modern design. Lots of white space paired with bold color elements captures the attention of the viewer and puts the focus on your photography.
The theme is optimized for speed, fully responsive, and SEO-friendly. It’s eCommerce-ready and works seamlessly with the native Gutenberg WordPress editor and other popular page builders. User-friendliness and easy navigation are guaranteed. All important pages are linked in the main menu and users can get to your products and services with just a single click.
What sets Breakthrough Pro apart from the other themes on the list is that it is built on the Genesis Framework. The framework acts as a foundational platform that provides all the functionalities and features WordPress offers. Genesis makes sure that your website is secure, regularly updated, and has access to the latest tools and widgets at all times.
The Genesis Framework requires a one-time payment of around US$60, which allows you to use the theme on as many websites as you want. This fee also includes unlimited updates and premium support for one year.
As I see it, the following theme is a great choice for building a photography website with WordPress:
12. Revolution Pro
Revolution Pro is one of the best WordPress themes for photographers from StudioPress’s collection for a number of reasons. First of all, the homepage is designed to showcase your best photographs at the top—a good start for any visual creative’s website. A prominent call to action encourages visitors to learn more or go directly to the product page.
Moreover, Revolution Pro comes fully equipped with everything you need for your photography website, including a pre-made online store and blog. It also offers multiple sample pages for different purposes, such as contact page, about page, services, and more.
Nevertheless, there is one small drawback: Revolution Pro does not include a pre-built portfolio section. To work around this, you can either customize one of the provided sample pages or create a portfolio page from scratch, for example with a tiled gallery.
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