Today, digital portfolios have taken over traditional book-bound portfolios.
Whether you’re a full-time photographer or an aspiring shutterbug, building a photography website can take your career to the next level. Showcasing your work on the internet enhances access to your work, improves your brand personality, and improves the opportunity for interactivity.
Building a full-fledged website from scratch can be arduous and expensive, especially for those who barely have coding or designing knowledge. Therefore, you should consider looking for the best photography WordPress themes to jumpstart your website without any hassle.
Photography WordPress themes help you exhibit your photos in the best possible ways. While picking out a theme for your website, you should make certain that the theme features a responsive design, multiple gallery layouts, SEO optimization, and social media integration.
If you’re planning to lay the first stone of your photography website but are confused about which theme to use, we’ve got you covered!
In this article, we’re going to dig through a large collection of WordPress themes to bring you the 25+ best free photography WordPress themes.
Let’s get into it.
What to Look for in the Best Free Photography WordPress Theme?
The trend of photography has skyrocketed all over the world. Be it a hobby or a full-time profession, more and more people are getting into this art form. Thus, it has opened up a massive market for this niche.
Considering its potential, web developers and designers have crafted hundreds of WordPress themes for photographers — both free and premium. With so many high-grade options on the market, it can be relatively bewildering to find the right match for your website.
So, before you jump to a conclusion, here are a few things you should look for while choosing the best free photography WordPress theme:
Exclusive Photo Gallery
For any photography website, an exclusive and visually attractive photo gallery is a must. Online galleries are a great place for photographers to showcase their work and creativity to attract more clients.
In recent years, most WordPress themes have started to integrate built-in gallery sections. However, you should consider choosing one that includes advanced features, such as animations, effects, or sliders. These effects help to make your gallery page more fun and interactive. Thus, it quickly grabs the attention of all the visitors.
However, if you need help building a gallery in WordPress, you should check out our article on how to create a gallery in WordPress.
Responsive and Retina Ready
Responsive and mobile-ready themes are designed with a unique ability to adjust their layout, depending upon the device and screen size used for browsing a specific website. This ultra-flexible adaptive nature significantly improves readability, ensures flawless performance, and enhances user experience.
Similarly, a retina-ready display improves the overall feel of your website by delivering high-end graphics, vibrant colors, sharp images, and clear texts. With a responsive and retina-ready design, your website is more likely to look great and perform seamlessly across all browsing devices, including iPhones, iPad, mobile devices, tablets, laptops, and even desktop computers.
Customization Features
Being able to tweak through all the elements of your website helps you to add a bit of personal touch and create a unique brand identity. Keep in mind that the free WordPress theme does not offer extensive customization features like the premium ones.
But as long as your theme allows you to personalize essential elements, such as theme layout, color scheme, font style, web content, background images, and custom logos, you’re good to go!
Plugin Compatibility
Another top reason why WordPress is so popular globally is because of the plugin compatibility. WP plugins are extended tools or softwares designed to add new functionality to your website or boost the existing features of your site.
Both free and paid WordPress plugins are up for grabs in the market. With these powerful tools, you can make your website more feature-rich, practical, interactive, and secure. But note that, all free WordPress themes do not support these plugins. Hence, always go for a WordPress theme that features popular plugin compatibility.
If you go ahead and install a theme that does not support a WordPress plugin, you’ll have to end up with a pretty basic website for your photography business.
Built-In SEO Features
There is no doubt that visual appearance makes a significant impact on engaging your website visitors. However, having an eye-catching and elegant website alone will not do the job for you. So, whenever you’re on a hunt for a free photography theme, your number one priority should be built-in SEO features.
A theme that is coded with advanced SEO features can automatically boost your web content and generate more organic traffic to your WordPress website. According to the latest survey, only 0.78% of Google users go on the second page of the SERP to find what they’re looking for. It means your photography website has to rank on the first page of the search engine result page for it to generate organic traffic.
While almost all premium themes are integrated with built-in SEO supports, the case is quite different for free themes. So, you need to thoroughly research and find a free theme that has built-in SEO features and SEO plugins compatibility.
WooCommerce Compatible
To be fair, not all photographers or photojournalists would require a WordPress theme with WooCommerce integration. However, if you’re a professional photographer who’s looking to sell photographs online or if you’re planning to build a stock photography platform, WooCommerce compatibility is mandatory.
With WooCommerce compatibility, you can transform your default WordPress website into a full-fledged online store. You can even personalize your online shop exactly the way you want it. With this top-notch plugin, you will also get access to multiple payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, Square, Amazon Pay, Authorize.net, and many more.
Cross-Browser Compatibility
Your photography website should support all the popular website browsers. Note that cross-browser compatibility is directly related to the functionality of your website rather than its appearance. It means your website should load flawlessly and perform consistently across several website environments to ensure an optimal experience.
So, before you go ahead and randomly pick a theme for your photography website, make sure that your theme is compatible with all the popular browsers, including Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Opera.
Customer Support
Even as the world’s most popular content management system, WordPress is not devoid of technical flaws. If you’re planning to start a website using WordPress, keep in mind that you’re likely to run into a handful of technical issues every once in a while.
In most cases, such issues and bugs are relatively minor, which you can resolve on your own. However, on rare occasions, you may stumble upon many tricky and technical issues that you may be tough to resolve on your own. In such cases, you might want to have a team of experts to help you resolve the problem.
Usually, most free themes do not offer customer support to their clients. And even if they do, they only offer limited services for a short amount of time. So, make sure to look out for a theme that offers quick and consistent customer service to assist you in tough times. Even if they offer limited services, ensure the support covers all theme-related issues like technical bugs, plugin installation, theme installation, and compatibility.
If you are a professional photographer and want to start a website with more features, you may also opt for premium photography themes. We have curated a list of the best Photography WordPress themes. Feel free to check them out.
List of Best Free Photography WordPress Themes
Let’s look at our list of 28+ best free photography WordPress themes.
1. Perfect Portfolio
As the name suggests, Perfect Portfolio is a free WordPress theme elegantly designed to showcase your works, projects, and achievements on your website. This free theme serves as an excellent choice for creative photographers, freelancers, and agencies.
This theme is packed with loads of advanced features and functionality. Just like any other WordPress theme, Perfect Portfolio comes with a fully responsive and mobile-friendly design that allows your website to adapt and adjust to all types of devices and screen sizes.
Besides that, this free photography WordPress theme integrates a built-in live customizer. With this, you can effortlessly fine-tune your website appearance as per your style and see the changes in real-time.
This free photography theme features a distinct portfolio section where you can display your photographs, photo projects, journals, and accomplishments. In addition to that, Perfect Portfolio is fully compatible with the WooCommerce plugin. It lets you transform your regular website into a stock photography platform to sell your photographs.
Although a free theme, Perfect Portfolio has put together advanced SEO features to help your website to rank quicker across all search engine platforms.
- Responsive and Mobile Friendly
- Built-In Live Customizer
- Cross-Browser Compatible
- Search Engine Optimized
- Full Social Media Support
- Schema Integration
- WooCommerce Plugin Compatible
- Predefined Portfolio Page
- Optimized for Speed and Performance
- Free Customer Support
2. Silvia
Silvia is a classic free WordPress theme tailored to share your photos and promote your portfolio online. This theme features an adequate room to let your photography breathe so that your audience can browse through your work without any distractions.
As you expect from any decent photography theme, Silvia features a built-in photo gallery to publish all your photo projects in the most creative ways. Besides that, this theme comes with multiple content layouts with distinct sidebar configurations, columns, and grids styles.
With the WordPress Live Customizer, you can take control of all the customization settings to make necessary changes to your website. You can easily tweak the colors, typography, and layout of your website using this feature.
With the fully responsive design of Silvia, your photography website is guaranteed to appear great on all browsing devices. It also ensures pixel-perfect display on all screen sizes and resolutions. As the theme is translation-ready, you can easily translate your website into multiple languages.
Moreover, you can increase your social reach with Silvia’s Social Media Integration feature.
- Customization Options and Settings
- Multiple Content Layouts
- Superb Photo Gallery
- One-Click Demo Import
- Grid Layout for Posts and Pages
- Responsive Design and Retina Ready
- Custom Fonts and Colors
- Social Sharing Included
- Translation Ready
- Regular Theme Updates
3. Photograph
Photograph is a free creative WordPress theme exclusively crafted for photographers, photo agencies, designers, and bloggers. This multipurpose theme combines a modern design with tons of outstanding features to serve the needs of any creative website.
Like most WP themes, Photograph is highly responsive and is fully optimized to support multiple devices, including smartphones, desktops, laptops, and tablets. Other than that, this free theme incorporates multiple theme layout options.
Photograph also provides you with complete control of customization options and settings. Likewise, you can take advantage of the infinite color options to tweak the colors of the web posts and pages as per your brand personality.
This theme fully supports the popular WooCommerce plugin. You can simply build an eCommerce store using this plugin and display your photos for sale without any coding knowledge.
In addition to that, this free photography WordPress theme is coded with top-notch SEO approaches. Hence, this theme automatically boosts your web ranking to help your audience discover your web pages using relevant search terms.
- Responsive Design and Mobile Friendly
- Infinite Color Options
- Multiple Theme Layouts
- WooCommerce Compatible
- Social Media Integrated
- SEO Friendly
- Google Font Integrated
- Cross-Browser Compatible
- Video Integration
- Default Gallery Layout
4. Rife Free
Simple yet elegant, Rife Free has held its stature as one of the best creative multipurpose themes in the market. With the sheer combination of seven exclusive demos and a one-click importer, this free WordPress theme serves as an excellent choice for photography websites.
Rife Free comes with powerful Elementor and WPBakery page builders that empower you with full control over every aspect of your website design. Additionally, this outstanding theme features WordPress Live Customizer to tweak several aspects of your website, including header, footer, fonts, and colors.
Even though Rife Free does not cost you a single dime, it supports multiple WordPress plugins. You can fully transform your website into a stock photography platform and sell your photographs to your customer using the WooCommerce plugin. Likewise, you can take advantage of the WPML plugin and make your website multilingual.
To manage your photos and media in an effective way, Rife Free includes a built-in media manager. Besides that, this free theme integrates Album Bricks Gallery to showcase your images in the most elegant way possible.
- WordPress Live Customizer
- Multiple Post Grid
- Built-In Writing Effect
- WooCommerce Compatible
- Drag-and-Drop Page Builders
- Two Theme Header Variations
- Web Fonts for Layout Parts
- RTL Support
- Mega Menu Included
- Automatic Theme Updates
5. Elegant Portfolio
As the name suggests, Elegant Portfolio is a clean and modern portfolio theme tailored to showcase your works and achievements online. It makes an excellent companion for all the creative folks, freelancers, and content creators to get started with their websites.
With this free theme, you no longer have to spend hours designing your website. You can import all the ready-made content of Elegant Portfolio with just a single click and set up your photography website within a few minutes.
If you do not like the ready-made content and settings, you can customize each and every element of your website using the built-in live customizer. You can tweak the color, add unique elements, change typography options, and add custom logos to your website using this tool.
This free theme allows you to display your social media links on your photography website to interact with your audience. Apart from the most popular social networks, this free theme also supports Chinese and Russian social media platforms such as Xing, VK, OK, and many more.
Additionally, Elegant Portfolio is optimized for speed and performance. It means your photography website will load relatively faster and deliver a smooth browsing experience.
- Mobile-Friendly Design
- One-Click Demo Content Import
- Built-In Live Customizer
- Distinct Portfolio Section
- Call-to-Action (CTA) section
- Social Media Integration
- SEO and Speed Optimized
- Schema Integration
- Cross-Browser Compatible
- Friendly and Quick Support
6. AcmePhoto
AcmePhoto is a masonry-based WordPress theme ideal for photographers and designers to showcase their creativity. Although this elegant theme is completely free, it is packed with premium features and an eye-catching design.
AcmePhoto comes with a fully customizable masonry layout. This unique layout design is tailored to help you showcase your photographs and other creative projects in the most elegant way possible.
However, if you do not like the pre-designed layout, you can make changes to all the masonry sections, including category, date, comment, author, and so on. With this theme, you can also add background images, change website color, add custom logos to reflect your brand personality.
This free WordPress theme is fully responsive to adapt to multiple screen sizes and browsing devices. So, it doesn’t matter whether your users use desktop computers or smartphones, they are sure to get optimal performance and a seamless experience.
In contrast to most free themes, AcmePhoto is 100 percent SEO-friendly. It is coded with advanced SEO approaches that boost your website content across different search engine platforms. Additionally, this free theme integrates full social media support.
- Excellent Featured Section
- Advanced Masonry Layout
- Custom Copyright Text
- Social Media Integration
- Cross-Browser Compatibility
- Responsive and Retina Ready
- Advanced Background Image
- Fast Page Loading
- SEO Friendly
- Translation Ready
8. Fotografie
Fotografie is a popular WordPress theme with elegant design and high-end features. This free theme makes a great companion for anyone working in the creative sector, such as photographers, graphic designers, artists, freelancers, and bloggers.
This theme offers top-notch customization options and a powerful theme options panel that allows you to personalize your website precisely. Using this tool, you can adjust web layouts, pick your favorite colors, change fonts, upload your logo, and add a custom background without hiring a professional designer.
Besides that, you can highlight the most recent and popular posts on your website using the featured content. You can even add multiple posts on the feature content section with different titles and subtitles.
As a photographer, it is evident that you want to display your photos, project, and accomplishments on your website. For this, Fotografie includes a distinct portfolio section on the homepage.
Lastly, Fotografie comes with a full social media integration. You can connect all your social media platforms directly to your website to maximize your social reach. It also helps to increase customer interaction and relationships.
- Powerful Theme Options
- Responsive and Retina Ready
- Header Media Options
- Distinct Portfolio Section
- Built-In Dropdown Menu
- Social Media Integration
- Featured Content Section
- Hero Content Feature
- Translation Ready
- Incredible Customer Support
10. Photofocus
Photofocus is another multipurpose photography theme specifically dedicated to photographers, photojournalists, photo bloggers, and freelancers. With the perfect blend of aesthetic design and high functionality, this theme ensures optimal user experience and top-notch performance.
With an ultra-responsive and mobile-friendly design, Photofocus is fully compatible with all browsing devices, screen resolutions, and display sizes.
If you’re a creative person, there is no point in having a theme that does not allow you to explore limitless possibilities to showcase your creativity. With this in mind, Photofocus comes with a powerful theme options panel. You can modify just about every element of your website and explore endless possibilities when it comes to customization.
Besides that, this free photography theme integrates an eye-catching portfolio section. Here, you can display all your photos, projects, stories, and designs in a compelling way to get more clients.
This free theme offers excellent technical support to all their clients. For free support, you can check out the support forum section to find instructions or post your queries in the forum to resolve your issues.
- Responsive and Mobile Friendly
- Powerful Theme Options Panel
- Featured Page Slider
- Hero Content Feature
- Custom Layout Included
- Incredible Portfolio Section
- Custom Header and Logo
- Optimized for Speed and Performance
- Built-In Testimonials Section
- Excellent Tech Support
13. Pixgraphy Free
Pixgraphy Free is a highly customizable WordPress theme designed for photographers and creative folks. It comes with the perfect blend of exquisite design, rich features, top performance, and fast page loading technology.
Similar to most WP themes, Pixgraphy Free is fully responsive and mobile-friendly. This theme is optimized for numerous display sizes and devices, including mobile phones, laptops, desktop computers, and tablets.
Furthermore, Pixgraphy Free comes with multiple blog layout options that allow you to specify different layouts for individual posts and pages. It also features five unique sidebar options to enhance navigation.
You can make the most out of the integrated WooCommerce plugin and build an exclusive online store. You can sell both digital photographs and framed prints directly from your website to make some money.
Pixgraphy coded with advanced SEO features. This free theme automatically enhances your website ranking and helps you outperform your competitors across all search engine platforms. Additionally, this theme gives you the ability to add up to seven social media icons on your website for maximum social reach.
- Fully Responsive Layout
- Multiple Blog Layout Options
- WooCommerce Compatible
- 7 Social Media Icons
- 5 Unique Sidebar Options
- SEO Friendly
- Cross-Browser Compatible
- Popular Plugin Support
- Google Fonts Included
- Free Customer Support
14. Neve
Neve is an elegant single-page photography theme that inspires any creative project. It features more than 80 ready-to-import website demos to help kickstart your website within a few minutes.
In contrast to other free themes, Neve comes with seamless integration of the Gutenberg editor and six different page builders, including Elementor and Visual Composer. With a solid blend of these powerful tools, you can easily customize your website precisely the way you want without coding knowledge.
Likewise, Neve is blazing fast and lightweight. This free photography WordPress theme scores 100 speed-grade on PageSpeed Insights performance tests. It also ensures that your website loads in less than a second.
To make sure your website performs well on search engines, Neve comes optimized with an SEO-ready structure and advanced source code that will significantly improve your website ranking. Other than that, you can translate every element of your website using this theme.
- 80+ Ready-Made Website Demos
- Integration with Gutenberg
- Six Page Builder Support
- Mobile Ready and AMP Compatible
- SEO Friendly Markup
- Optimized for Speed
- Social Media Integration
- Custom Header and Footer
- Translation and RTL Ready
- Safe Updates and Fast Support
15. Full Frame
Designed for photographers, Full Frame is a clean, minimal, and spacious Wordpress theme. It comes with extensive features and a sleek design to help you set up a fully functional photography website in no time.
Full Frame is built on Theme Customizer, CSS3, and HTML5 to ensure real-time customization. Moreover, this free theme comes with a powerful theme options panel that allows you to tweak theme settings without writing any codes.
To make your photography website look great on all devices and screen sizes, Full Frame integrates a highly responsive and mobile-friendly layout. This allows your website to adjust its layout immediately depending upon the device used to browse.
Full Frame offers a beautiful gallery section where you can display all your photographs in a graceful manner. You can even control the different slide effects and timing of the effects to make your featured content interactive and animated.
In contrast to other free themes, Full Frame integrates the Webmaster Tools option. This exclusive feature helps you to verify your website across several search engine platforms, including Google and Bing. Besides that, this advanced tool also allows you to optimize your website and keep track of your web traffic.
- Powerful Theme Options Panel
- Responsive and Mobile-Friendly Layout
- Featured Page Slider
- Multiple Custom Widgets
- Custom Header Image
- Webmaster Tools Included
- Built-In Dropdown Menu
- Beautiful Gallery Section
- Responsive Search Option
- Outstanding Customer Support
16. Electa
Electa is one of the most admired free portfolio WordPress themes. It is crafted to let designers, photographers, and other creative folks exhibit their work and achievements online.
Electa is relatively easy to set up and customize. Built with the Live Customizer, Electa offers extensive customization settings. With this, you can easily tweak several elements of your site, including font, color, header, page layout, and many more.
Moreover, Electa comes with a fully responsive and retina-friendly design. Regardless of which device your audience uses, your website will consistently adapt to the screen size and resolution to deliver top performance.
The grid layout of this theme makes it a perfect companion for you to exhibit your photos, designs, and achievements to attract more clients. It comes with WooCommerce plugin support to let you build an eye-catching online store.
Electa is built with ultra-lightweight and fast page loading technology. It means your website audiences no longer have to wait for it to load. This ensures seamless experience and audience retention.
Lastly, this free photography theme integrates social media support.
- Simple and Minimal Design
- WordPress Live Customizer
- Custom Layout Options
- Fully Responsive and Retina Ready
- Page Builder Ready
- WooCommerce Integration
- Social Media Integration
- Fast Loading Time
- Popular Plugin Support
- Free Customer Support
17. Freedom
Freedom is a simple yet intriguing photo blogging WordPress theme. It is bundled with tons of premium features and functionalities. And the best part — it’s completely free!
This free photography WordPress theme comes with a one-click demo import feature. Hence, you can replicate the premade demos with just a single click and get your fully functional website up and running.
Likewise, this free theme comes with multiple color options and advanced typography. You can easily change the colors of your site to reflect your brand personality and customize the font style to enhance readability.
Performance is the number one priority of Freedom. Although this theme does not cost any money, it is optimized for speed with a 99% Google Page Speed Score and a 95% GTmetrix Speed Score.
Freedom comes with advanced SEO codings and practices. It enhances your website content and helps them rank higher on all popular search engine platforms.
Meanwhile, Freedom supports the WooCommerce plugin. With that, you can build a fully functional online store right from scratch and sell your digital photos or framed photos directly from your website.
- Page Builder Integration
- Multiple Color Options
- Advanced Typography
- Custom Widgets
- Multiple Widget Areas
- Search Engine Optimized
- Optimized for Speed
- WooCommerce Compatible
- Major Browsers Compatible
- Friendly Dependable Support
18. Fotogenic
Fotogenic is one of the most creative WordPress themes dedicated to photographers, designers, and bloggers. It comes with a clean, unique, and lightweight design that will make your photography website look outstanding.
This theme offers two free website demos to help you jumpstart your photography website. You can capitalize the one-click demo import feature to replicate the entire demo content on your website with just a single click.
In contrast to regular WP themes, Fotogenic comes with a photographic layout that is well-fitting for any creative website. If you do not like a ready-made layout, you can customize every element of your website using powerful theme options to give it the perfect look.
Fotogenic is a fully responsive and mobile-ready WordPress theme. Hence, this theme makes your website appear great on all browsing devices and screen sizes, including mobile phones, tablets, iPad, desktops, and laptops.
Furthermore, Fotogenic comes with social media integration. You can add social media icons on the header of your website and link the respective social account to stay connected with your dedicated fans.
- One-Click Demo Import
- Photographic Layout
- Responsive and Mobile Ready
- Retina Ready Design
- Powerful Theme Options
- Unlimited Color Options
- Built-In Sticky Menu
- Popular Plugin Compatibility
- Social Media Integration
- Top-Notch Customer Support
19. Tracks
Are you looking for a clean and minimal free WordPress theme that does not cost you a single penny? If so, Tracks seems like the perfect match for you. This free photography WordPress theme is packed with loads of high-end features and elegant design.
Tracks is a highly responsive and mobile-friendly WordPress theme. It has this distinctive ability to make your website adapt to multiple screen sizes and devices. Furthermore, this free theme works seamlessly with the new Gutenberg Block Editor.
Likewise, Tracks also integrates the popular Elementor Page Builder plugin. You can use this plugin to build stunning landing pages, blog layouts, and online stores for your photography website.
For better customization, Tracks integrated WordPress Live Customizer. You can make drastic changes to your website appearance by tweaking the website title, logo, background images, menu options, theme colors, and font styles.
This speed-optimized theme is fully compatible with the popular WooCommerce plugin. With this handy tool, you can transform your regular WordPress website into a beautiful stock photography website to sell photos and videos.
- Clean and Minimal Layout
- Responsive and Mobile-Friendly
- Battle-Tested Code
- Gutenberg Compatible
- Elementor Page Builder Support
- Built-In Live Customizer
- Optimized to Load Quickly
- WooCommerce Integrated
- Free Regular Updates
- Top-Notch Support
20. Ascendant
Ascendant is a free multipurpose WordPress theme that is suitable to kickstart just about any kind of website. It comes with plenty of features and functionality to help you craft multiple types of content.
Similar to most WordPress themes, Ascendant is designed to adapt to virtually any browsing device and screen size. With a responsive layout, your photography website will be easily accessible to all your audience, regardless of which device they use.
Every page and post of Ascendant is fully customizable. You can select a color palette for your layout, pick from over a hundred typefaces, adjust the header and footer, and choose from five sidebar layouts to give your website a personal touch.
It is essential for photographers to showcase their works and projects on their websites. For this, Ascendant features a distinct portfolio section. You can take advantage of this section to display your photographs in a compelling way to generate more clients. Other than that, you can also create an online store to sell your digital photographs, thanks to the integration of WooCommerce and Easy Digital Download plugins.
- Responsive and Mobile Friendly
- Complete Layout Control
- Five Different Sidebar Layouts
- Limitless Color Options
- Custom Typography Feature
- Distinct Portfolio Section
- Custom Shortcodes
- WooCommerce Support
- Easy Digital Downloads
- Social Media Integration
21. Activello
Activello is a clean and minimal multipurpose WordPress theme that integrates a perfect blend of pixel-perfect design and top-notch functionality. This free theme is specifically crafted to take your WordPress website to a whole new level.
Activello uses Bootstrap frontend framework to execute responsive and mobile-friendly approaches. It is highly adaptive to multiple browsing devices and screen sizes for better readability, seamless performance, and optimal experience.
This free photography WordPress theme comes with a built-in WordPress Live Customizer. With this nifty tool, you can make necessary changes to your website, including edit header/footer, change element colors, add a custom logo, edit font styles, and many more.
Activello integrates a full-screen featured slider powered by FlexSlider. This exclusive slider allows you to highlight a specific post to help it get the attention it deserves. Besides that, this free theme features an infinite scroll feature.
With Activello, you can also sell digital copies of your photographs directly from your website. You can take advantage of the integrated WooCommerce plugin to build an interactive online store without spending any money.
- Responsive and Retina Ready
- WordPress Live Customizer Support
- Full-Screen Featured Slider
- Infinite Scroll Support
- Unlimited Color Options
- Font Awesome Icons
- WooCommerce Integration
- Popular Plugin Support
- Translation Ready
- Top-Notch Customer Support
22. Bravada
Bravada is an exceptional fullscreen WordPress theme suitable for bloggers, content creators, and photographers. Although you can download this theme for free, it embraces superb design, flawless performance, and a retina-ready display.
With extensive customization options, Bravada truly brings the best out of your creativity. You can dynamically tweak every aspect of your photography website like font style, font size, colors, background image, header, footer, meta tags, and so on.
Bravada is compatible with the latest Gutenberg Block Editor. With this tool, you can build media-rich pages and posts using blocks instead of custom codes. Thus, you can add, remove, or readjust multimedia content on your website without being an expert web developer.
Instead of a small section, Bravada dedicated an entire page to showcase your projects and work. You can add your photographs and videos for display on the built-in portfolio page and also categorize them for better navigation.
Moreover, this free photography theme is eCommerce ready. The developers of Bravada have taken all the right measures to seamlessly integrate the WooCommerce plugin into their theme. With this superb plugin, you can literally transform your website into a fully operating online shop.
- Highly Customizable Theme
- Gutenberg Block Editor
- Mobile-First and Responsive
- Beautiful Portfolio Page
- Multiple Content Layouts
- On-Page SEO
- eCommerce Ready
- Social Media Integration
- Translation Ready
- Standard Customer Support
23. Illdy
Illdy is another free one-page WordPress theme built with the Bootstrap 3 frontend framework. Bundled with a plethora of features and pixel-perfect design, this multipurpose theme is carefully crafted to take your photography site to a whole new level.
To deliver flawless performance and optimal user experience, Illdy comes with an ultra-responsive and mobile-first approach. Thus, your photography website will appear visually appealing across all devices and screen sizes.
Like most WordPress themes, Illdy is highly customizable. The built-in WP Live Customizer lets you change each and every section of your website, including element colors, hero image section, header, footer, and font style.
As a professional photographer, you might want to sell your photographs to your customers directly from your website. Hence, this free theme comes with WooCommerce compatibility. Not only that, this plugin allows you to receive payments from multiple gateways such as PayPal, Amazon Pay, Stripe, and Square.
Additionally, Illdy supports popular WP plugins such as Yoast SEO, Jetpack, W3 Total Cache, iThemes Security, Contact Form 7, Easy Bootstrap Shortcodes, and so forth.
- Responsive and Mobile-First Approach
- Retina-Ready Display
- WordPress Live Customizer
- Unlimited Color Options
- Font Awesome Icons
- Full-Screen Hero Image
- eCommerce Ready
- Popular Plugin Support
- Translation Ready
- Top-Notch Customer Support
24. Photography Blog
As the name says it all, Photography Blog is a free WordPress theme for photographers, bloggers, and content creators. With the blend of minimal design and rich features, this free theme helps you to build a fully functional photography website from start to finish without any technical expertise.
It comes with a fully responsive web design for better readability and an elegant user experience. With this theme, your audience no longer has to worry about zooming, resizing, and scrolling while browning from mobile devices or tablets.
There is no doubt that your website speed and performance make a significant impression on your visitors. Hence, Photography Blog is optimized for high-speed performance to ensure higher return visits, engagement, conversions, and a better overall user experience.
Besides that, this free WordPress theme is coded with high-end SEO approaches. It means Photography Blog not only makes your website look great but it also ranks your site higher in organic search to generate more traffic. This free theme also supports popular social media platforms.
- Fully Responsive Design
- Highly Customizable Layout
- Mobile-Friendly Gallery Page
- High-Speed Performance
- SEO Optimized
- Social Media Integration
- Responsive Search Bar
- Translation Ready
- Flexible and Developer Friendly
- Friendly One-on-One Support
25. Otography
Otography is a clean, elegant, and minimal WordPress theme for photographers, photo bloggers, portfolios, photo agencies, and studios. With a fully responsive and mobile-ready design, this free theme is compatible with all the major browsing devices and screen sizes.
This free WordPress theme features a built-in sticky menu that can be easily accessed without the hassle of scrolling. Since colors have a massive impact on human emotion, this theme integrates unlimited color schemes. With this feature, you can easily change the color of your website to reflect your unique style.
For any photographer, one of the biggest motives to build a website is to showcase their photos to the audience. Thus, Otography features a grid-style gallery page to help you display your photos and projects in a compelling way.
If you’re planning to sell your photograph directly from your website, Otography has got you covered! This free theme is fully integrated with the WooCommerce plugin. With this advanced tool, you can build a beautiful online store to sell various photography-related products.
- Fully Responsive Design
- Built-In Sticky Menu
- Unlimited Color Schemes
- Seven Social Media Icons
- WooCommerce Compatibility
- bbPress Compatibility
- Responsive Search Bar
- Grid-Style Gallery Page
- SEO Ready
- Cross-Browser Compatible
26. Timber Lite
Timber Lite is a minimal yet intriguing WordPress theme rigorously designed for photographers and creative agencies. It is bundled with loads of high-end features that help you to kickstart your photography portfolio website without any technical knowledge.
This free theme comes with a responsive and mobile-ready design. With this, your website automatically adjusts its layout depending upon the device used for browsing. Like most WordPress themes, Timber Lite is highly customizable and flexible.
Out of the box, Timber Lite integrates galleries with text and video support. On this distinct page, you can showcase all your works and projects, including photos, videos, and texts, in the most elegant way.
Timber Lite believes that your photos are filled with untold stories and mysteries. Therefore, it compliments your pictures and pages with lively and animated transitions to bring life out of them.
Out of the box, Timber Lite is optimized for all search engine platforms. This theme is coded with advanced SEO features that automatically boost your content and enhance your web ranking. Lastly, this free photography theme comes with a social media integration.
- Responsive and Mobile-Ready
- Highly Customizable
- Projects Slider with Filmstrip Layout
- Animated Page Transitions
- Galleries with Text and Video Support
- Distinct About Us Section
- Social Media Integration
- Optimized for SEO
- Cross-Browser Compatible
- Human‐Centered Customer Support
27. Photoway
Photoway is a free photography WordPress theme that is designed to help you unleash your creativity and storytelling. With the one-click demo system, you can import all demo data to your website and jumpstart it without any coding knowledge.
Built with Live Customizer API, Photoway allows you to change theme settings, font styles, color schemes, and widgets while also letting you preview those changes in real-time. Furthermore, this free theme integrates multiple custom widgets to add more functionalities to your content and optimize it to suit your requirement.
Photoway is a fully responsive and mobile-friendly photography theme. With this theme, your audience no longer has to zoom, resize, and scroll around to browse your website.
Photoway supports all the social media platforms to help you increase your social reach. Similarly, this responsive theme is also optimized for SEO. It means your website has a higher chance of ranking across all search engine platforms to help you maximize organic traffic to your photography website.
- One-Click Demo System
- Built with Live Customizer API
- Fully Responsive Design
- Unlimited Color Options
- Multiple Custom Widgets
- Social Media Integration
- SEO Friendly
- Popular Plugins Support
- Up To 3 Testimonial Section
- Translation Ready
28. Draft Portfolio
Draft Portfolio is a professional and feature-rich WordPress theme designed to get your creative website up and running without coding skills. This free theme serves as an excellent companion for those looking to promote the latest photographs, designs, artworks, and other creative works.
The simple and minimal layout of Draft Portfolio enhances every aspect of your website and offers a user-friendly interface. This theme is highly responsive and adaptive to several screen sizes and browsing devices for better readability.
As the name says it all, Draft Portfolio is a full-fledged portfolio theme. Thus, this theme allows you to create and manage your own portfolio section. You can display your photographs, videos, designs, and artworks elegantly in the portfolio section to help your clients discover your work.
Similar to the majority of WordPress themes in the market, Draft Portfolio offers tons of customization options. Using this theme, you can add your custom logo, change font styles, and tweak color schemes to give an exclusive touch to your website.
This translation-ready theme is rigorously designed to let you and your audience translate your photography website into several languages.
- Simple and Minimal Layout
- Fully Responsive Design
- Create and Manage Your Portfolio
- Personalized Welcome Message
- Tons of Customization Options
- Translation Ready
- Social Media Integration
- SEO Optimized
- Cross-Browser Compatible
Which is the Best Free Photography WordPress Theme for You?
Frankly speaking, all the 31 themes listed in this article are excellent choices for your photography-related website.
These free themes include all the essential features that a fully functional website requires such as responsive and mobile-friendly layout, easy customization, SEO-friendly, social media integration, and many more. However, there are a couple of free photography themes that stand out among the rest with their premium features.
For instance, Perfect Portfolio is one of the best all-inclusive WordPress themes for photographers and creative folks. It integrates a one-click demo import content feature that allows you to kickstart a fully functional photography theme in a single click.
Besides that, this free photography WordPress theme includes a predefined portfolio section. In this exclusive area, you can display your photos, previous projects, and accomplishments to win the heart of your customers.
On top of that, Perfect Portfolio is fully optimized for speed, performance, and search engine. And it is fully compatible with the popular WooCommerce plugin.
Here are a few exclusive features of Perfect Portfolio WordPress Theme:
- One-Click Demo Import Content
- Responsive and Mobile Friendly
- Built-In WordPress Live Customizer
- Predefined Portfolio Page
- Call-to-Action Section
- Widget Ready
- WooCommerce Plugin Compatible
- Schema Integration
- Search Engine Optimized
- Full Social Media Support
- Optimized for Speed and Performance
- Cross-Browser Compatible
- Regular Theme Updates
- Translation and RTL Scripts Ready
- Free Customer Support
Similarly, if you’re looking for a free WordPress theme that comes with an excellent photo gallery and offers a grid layout for posts and pages, you should consider checking the Silvia WordPress theme.
Should You Use a Free Theme or Premium Theme for Your Photography Website?
Most WordPress beginners assume that the only way to establish a successful WordPress site is by investing in a premium theme. And it does seem obvious, especially looking at the high-end features and functionalities of paid themes.
However, that’s not always true.
In fact, we highly suggest that all the WordPress newbies should kickstart their photography website using a free theme and only upgrade to premium themes later.
Why?
In recent times, free themes have made a significant improvement in every aspect, including their design, features, usability, and flexibility. If you compare premium themes with free themes, there is no doubt that premium themes will have superiority in every aspect. However, most free themes these days include all the necessary features that are required to build a fully operating website.
So, if you’re a beginner trying to start a photography website, we highly recommend you to find a relevant free theme to get your site up and running. Free themes have relatively basic features and are usually easy to use. Once you get familiarized with these basic features, you should consider upgrading to paid packages. A premium photography WordPress theme offers you tons of high-end features to take your website to a whole new level. Some of the high-end features include:
- Highly Interactive Interface
- Massive Theme Options
- Unlimited Color Options
- Multiple Demo Website
- Advanced Typography Features
- Major Plugin Support
- WooCommerce Compatible
- Social Media Integration
- Fast Page Loading Speed
- Security and Privacy
- Fast and Reliable Support
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Why should you create a website for your photography business?
Usually, most content creators tend to underestimate the importance of a website. It is because building a website right from scratch and growing traffic takes a lot of time and effort.
Despite that, one of the first things you should do when you start a photography business or work as a freelance photographer is building a website. Believe it or not but creating a personal or business photography website is the best way to brand yourself and can prove to be the gateway to your career development.
Here are a few reasons why you should build a website for your photography business:
● To promote your portfolio on the internet
● To sell your photographs online
● To grow your social media reach and build an online community
● To communicate your brand or photography style
● To collect clients’ information
● To manage appointments and client details
Is WordPress a good platform for photographers?
To be honest, WordPress is by far the best website-building platform for photographers, designers, artists, or anyone working in the creative sector. In contrast to other website platforms, WordPress combines minimalistic design with high-end features specifically crafted for photography websites.
Comparatively, WordPress also has a massive library of themes and templates dedicated to photography websites. These themes integrate an exclusive portfolio section where you can showcase your photos, videos, projects, and accomplishments in the most elegant way to impress your potential customers.
Apart from that, there are a few reasons why you should build your photography website in WordPress:
● WordPress has a simple and user-friendly interface.
● WordPress offers tons of design flexibility to help you tailor your website as per your brand and taste.
● WordPress empowers you with complete control over your website.
● It allows you to add extra functionalities, using extensions, plugins, and third-party integrations.
● WordPress is by far the best content platform when it comes to SEO.
● WordPress offers multilingual site options
● You can create an online shop on your WordPress website to sell digital prints, photographs, workshops, and photography equipment.WordPress has a simple and user-friendly interface.
How to install free photography WordPress themes?
In the global market, free themes are quite popular because they include clean design, easy customization features, easy installation features, and most importantly they cost no money. Actually, free themes are great options for WordPress newbies planning to launch their new website.
You can get your brand new website up and running pretty quickly using free themes. However, with thousands of free themes available in the market, finding one that fits you the best may take a while.
Once you find the right free theme for your photography website, follow these simple steps to install it:
● First and foremost, log in to your WP admin area.
● Next, go to the Appearance menu on the left side of the screen and click on Themes.
● Click the “Add New Themes” button on the top of the screen.
● If you’ve already downloaded the theme of your choice, you can click on the “Upload Theme” button on the top of the screen and choose the zip file. Once you choose the theme file, you can click on the “Install Now” button to install your theme.
However, if you are yet to find the right theme for your photography website, you can search for it on this page.
● Once you find the right match, hover your mouse on top of the page. It shall then review three buttons — the install button, the details button, and the preview button.
● Press on the Install button and stand back until the theme is installed.
● Once the installation is complete, click on the Activate button to complete the process.
Conclusion
And that’s a wrap! Remember, before you choose a free theme for your website, make sure you know what you’re looking for. Your photography website should always showcase your photos in the most graceful manner and portray the story you’re trying to illustrate. Apart from that, your photography website should always be easily navigable and interactive to maximize audience retention.
The 25+ best free photography WordPress themes listed in this article have been thoroughly researched and handpicked to help you find the right theme for your website. Each and every theme mentioned in this article has its own set of features. They integrate responsive design, retina-ready display, SEO optimization, plugin compatibility, stunning gallery section, and many more.
Furthermore, you might need to add some of the popular plugins after installing one of these themes. In addition, these plugins can help increase the functionalities of your website. Do check them out: