10 Captivating WordPress Photo Gallery Themes
We live in a very visually oriented culture where nonverbal communication is much more powerful than any spoken or written word. It is not ours to judge whether this is a good or a bad thing, but the fact that we are mostly visual beings is something we should never overlook, especially when we create a website, either for personal or business purposes.
Photographers, artists, creative agencies, photo bloggers all know the power of great photography and how the context in which they present their photos matters. As a creative, you naturally want to create a visually stunning website with neatly organized, breath-taking galleries. The good news is that you don’t need to be a developer or a programmer to do that, you just need to choose a quality WordPress photo gallery theme.
So, where should you start? Look no more, we compiled a list of the most impressive WP gallery themes that will save you a lot of time and make your decision easier:
- Malgre – Creative Agency Theme
- Azalea – Fashion Photography Theme
- Olema – Creative Agency Theme
- Esben – Elegant Fashion Photography Theme
- Mira – A Photo Stories Blog WordPress Theme
- Clean Photo – Photography Portfolio WordPress Theme
- Ashade – Photography WordPress Theme
- Orkan – Artist and Design Agency Portfolio Theme
- Vernissage – Photography WordPress Theme
- TopPic – Portfolio Photography Theme
In the age where everyone gets to be famous for five minutes, everyone can be an artist, and everyone can share their creativity, you have to come up with something truly unique that will set you apart to reach your audience.
The Malgre WP theme acts as an elegant, white canvas whose style is ideal for highlighting the exquisiteness of your work. Its contemporary design and beautiful assortment of eight homepages tailor-made to suit the needs of creative agencies, digital studios, and creatives of all kinds is bound to leave you inspired.
The heart of this theme is its impressive collection of portfolio types and layouts, with attractive hover elements that add to the overall elegant feel of the theme. The testimonial list shortcode enables you to create a richer portfolio experience by adding testimonials to your pages and build trustful relationships with your clients.
The theme is also responsive and retina ready, so it’s guaranteed your photos will look just as amazing on all screen sizes.
Features that make Malgre a great WordPress theme:
- Slider Revolution Responsive WordPress Plugin included
- A large collection of practical shortcodes
- Elementor Page Builder compatible
- Integrated Search
- SEO Optimized
There’s a lot more to fashion than a pretty piece of clothing. Fashion photographers have a very challenging task to tell a story of a certain moment, fabric, shape, and venue in a couple of frames. Therefore they need a stylish theme of a very sophisticated aesthetics with lots of niche-specific features to show off their skills and Azalea is all that and much more.
It comes in a seductive, feminine color palette with 12 stunning homepage layouts and an extensive collection of gallery types.
What also makes Azalea an excellent choice, not only for fashion photographers but for all kinds of visual creatives, is its photography module that includes clients archive, password-protected pages, and many more practical features. The photo proofing feature that is included is especially handy as it allows your clients to select and download images right from your site, and that certainly enhances communication with them.
If you plan to set up an online store, with this theme you can have it ready in no time – it is WooCommerce compatible and has a variety of supremely elegant premade shop page layouts to choose from.
Features that make Azalea a great WordPress theme:
- One-Click Demo Import
- Professional Support
- Retina Ready and Responsive
- WPBakery Page Builder and Slider Responsive Revolution Included for Free
- Social Share Functionality
Creative agencies nowadays really have a tough time attracting and winning over the clients, as the creative industry is one of the most competitive ones. Being creative is one thing, but selling creativity is something else completely. You have to find a way to show all your assets in a distinctively appealing manner and Olema is one of the greatest allies you can find to help you with that. If you expect a color carnival, you’re in for a surprise. This theme is way more sophisticated and uses the concept of minimalism and pixel-perfect design to create an atmosphere of harmony and supreme professionalism.
It features 13 homepage layouts premade for a variety of purposes. Creatives, artists, studios, designers, online stores, digital agencies, and similar will find it just perfect.
The horizontal scroll gallery is particularly attractive as it smoothly captures the visitor’s attention and keeps him on your site for longer. Animated typography adds a kind of modern flair to the theme and highlights its elegance. The theme also allows you to display full-screen presentations which is a great way to encourage your clients to focus on the quality of your work.
Features that make Olema a great WordPress theme:
- A large collection of custom shortcodes
- Parallax images in sections
- Infinite scroll pagination
- Compatible with Elementor Page Builder
- Multiple customizable layouts for portfolio lists
Esben is specifically made to answer the needs of all kinds of photographers with plenty of features that help them showcase their work in the best light. It comes with a variety of beautiful gallery layouts and gallery sliders and interesting scrolling effects. Its clean, minimalistic design and classy look perfectly suit a variety of niches.
The theme allows you to create a member-only area on your site with password-protected pages. Another big plus is the photo proofing feature which is great to enhance communication with clients as it lets them browse through the photo galleries made especially for them and download the pictures they like directly from your site.
If you particularly like a certain demo, you can have your site looking just the same in only one click, since the theme features a one-click demo import. On the other hand, if there are some elements you wish to customize to better suit your vision, you can easily do that as the theme comes with the WPBakery page builder, one of the easiest to use drag-and-drop page builders out there.
It also supports the social share functionality which is very important, especially for striving photographers who are just making their names, to reach as many potential clients as possible.
Features that make Esben a great WordPress theme:
- A large collection of home and inner pages
- Integrated Search
- Smooth Scroll
- Custom Widget Areas
- Contact Form 7 Plugin Compatibility
If your main passion is photo blogging, and you want to invest in quality imagery, the Mira WP template may be just what you’re looking for. Mira is a contemporary, clean photo story WordPress theme that you can use for a wide variety of purposes: as a personal or business blog, storytelling blog, travel, food, fashion or lifestyle blog, magazine, portfolio, etc.
It features a live theme customizer that allows for a lot of creativity in creating your site’s visual identity and offers plenty of options for displaying your imagery.
Photographers will also appreciate the option to display the meta info (title, date, category) under the feature image on a single post. The extensive collection of premade inner pages includes the author page that will inspire you to present yourself in an appealing manner.
There is no need to worry whether your work will look well on all devices, the theme is responsive so your photos will look great on all screen sizes.
If you happen to have any challenges with installing the theme, excellent professional support is at your disposal to help you with all the issues that you may run into.
Features that make Mira a great WordPress theme:
- SEO Optimized
- Compatible With Gutenberg
- 15 + Blog Layouts
- Instagram Feed Functionality
- Contact Form 7 Compatible
The concept of the Clean Photo WP theme is clearly to put maximum focus on your photos and artwork. All the elements are organized in such a way to direct the visitor’s attention to the visual content while providing smooth overall user experience. You get three niche-specific homepage layouts which is great if you have just stepped into the WP World and too much choice finds you confused.
An extensive collection of premade inner pages like the “About” page and “Contact” page, along with a variety of portfolio styles will help you set up your website faster. You also get to choose between two types of menus (simple and hamburger), and there’s a variety of sliders and header styles too.
Since the blog plays a huge role in an artist’s presentation, the blog layouts are also very inspiring and unique. You can use them to showcase your skills in more detail, share what inspires you, and connect with your audience on a more personal level.
All in all, this is an elegant, practical theme that is easy to use and customize to suit a variety of different niches.
Features that make CleanPhoto a great WordPress theme:
- Responsive & Retina Ready
- Visual Composer Included
- ACF Pro Plugin
- 6 Portfolio Listing Types
- Testimonials Block
“Modern” and “professional” are the first words that come to mind when you see the dark and sleek design of the Ashade theme. The niche-specific features that come with it fully support the first impression that the theme gives off. It is packed with an incredible collection of 18 photo galleries and slider layouts that offer an elegant way to display all the relevant information about your work.
Homepage layouts also feature minimalistic design and come in three variations – home with a video background, static image, and photo gallery with beautiful effects like the Ken Burns effect that highlights the beauty of your photos. Creative animations, smooth scroll, and interactive mouse cursor add a touch of class to your site and make user experience exceptional. Plus, the theme is bundled with the client’s proofing page, meaning that clients can approve the photos they like and download them right from your site, which makes the communication smooth and easy. It also features the before/after widget that shows how you processed photos and that is an excellent way to prove your expertise without a single word.
Features that make Ashade a great WordPress theme:
- Shadow Core with additional Elementor Widgets
- Ribbon Photography
- WooCommerce support
- Photo Sliders in 3 layouts: Simple, Fade, and with Parallax Effect
- Contact Form 7 Plugin
It takes a lot of skill to make a monochromatic design attractive and not dull but the Orkan theme managed to look incredibly refreshing and dynamic without having to burst with color.
Orkan comes with 15 homepage layouts, each created for a specific purpose from portfolio to a digital agency. This theme includes plenty of custom shortcodes like stacked images shortcode, animation holder shortcode and similar that enable you to create memorable presentations of your work. A large collection of portfolio layouts makes it easy for you to express your style and communicate your unique professional values. Horizontal scroll and parallax effects add a certain modern feel to the theme and make the user experience very smooth.
Setting up an online store is a breeze with this theme as it is WooCommerce compatible and features neat and stylish, premade shop page layouts. It also includes some premium plugins like WPBakery page builder that makes customizing the theme easy and the Slider Revolution plugin that allows you to add beautiful sliders to your pages.
Features that make Orkan a great WordPress theme:
- SEO Optimized
- Multiple Customizable Layouts for Portfolio Lists
- Social Icons Widget
- Anchor Functionality for One Page Sites
- Content Entry Animations
The Vernissage WP theme is made with all kinds of photographers in mind, both professionals and hobbyists. If you need a creative and inspiring canvas to showcase your photos, this theme will work like a charm for fashion, wedding sites, and photography studios. It comes with 12 gallery layouts to choose from and allows you to create an unlimited number of galleries using different layouts. It is responsive and retina ready so you can be sure your images will look good on all devices and screen sizes. It also supports adaptive image sizing which means that the visitor’s screen size is automatically detected and rescaled accordingly, resulting in faster loading and less bandwidth.
The user-friendly drag and drop gallery manager that is included with the theme makes it easy for you to upload and organize your photos into impressive galleries. You can set a different background for every page, and have as many backgrounds as you need. The audio background functionality allows you to create a really rich user experience.
Features that make Vernissage a great WordPress theme:
- Custom Post Type Support for Photo Gallery, Portfolio, Slideshow
- Automatic Thumbnails Generation
- Custom Widget
- Fullscreen Video Background Support
- Quick Accents Color Change
The TopPic WP template’s content-focused design sets a perfect scenery for you to showcase your work. It is specifically made for photographers, in line with the latest design trends featuring parallax headers and full-screen photo sliders for each page, box and wide layouts, and plenty of other beautiful elements. Even a total WP beginner with no experience or coding knowledge whatsoever, will soon feel like a pro as the theme is very simple to use and features a practical gallery manager that makes setting up galleries almost as pleasurable as taking the photos.
Although very simple at the first glance, this theme allows for a lot of customization so that you can adjust it to perfectly fit your vision. And it is easy to customize too – it features a live customizer that lets you see all the changes that you make live.
You also have the option to protect any page of your choice with a password, which is great to build an image of a trustworthy professional.
Features that make TopPic a great WordPress theme:
- Visual Composer drag and drop page builder included
- 6 Menu Styles.
- Fullscreen photo portfolio gallery layouts (with two animation effects)
- Multisite support
- Intuitive user-friendly admin panel
Let’s Wrap It All Up
What all of the themes from this list have in common are beautiful gallery layouts, retina ready and responsive design, and the fact that none of them requires any coding knowledge. Some have more photographer-specific features like the photo proofing functionality, others are very versatile and can satisfy the needs of large agencies whose scope goes beyond just photography. Although you can customize any of them to a certain extent, it is wiser to choose the one that requires the least adjustments from your side, as each is designed by a professional designer who chose its color palette, style, and features with great care. Additionally, if you need more advanced gallery options, you can always check out WordPress gallery plugins since they cover tons of features you may find useful. The final decision is entirely yours, and it is up to you to make sure your choice resonates with your style and values.
We hope this article was helpful. If you liked it, feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
