Well I made it to releasing part 3 of my Kickass WordPress finds around the internet.  If you havn’t already, check out part 1, part 2, and part 4 for the earlier awesomeness.  I have done some research to find some pretty rad theme templates that are either free or premium (come with a fee) that you could use to make your photography website free of boring.  I know that a photoblog is all about your photography and that should be the main subject; however, I like to find themes that allow you to interact and provide a little bit more value to the viewer.  Some of these themes add more value and could allow you to bring your photoblog to life and cut that umbilical cord on boringness.  Hopefully your photography is already exciting and not a yawn, but if not I’ll help you with creating less boring photography and having a home photography business.

Let me tell you that I love Flickr.  I love it to death but please don’t let this be your only place on the internet to display your work.  I 100% recommend using Flickr because it’s a great social media network for photography, but I don’t like the navigation and you can’t personalize the look or design that I know of yet. If you only have a Flickr account, you’re boring and I’m glad that you came to read these posts.

I won’t be going into as much detail with these themes, but I wanted to provide the ones I found from various places.  I will try and explain a popular Theme template at the end of this article. I want to go into a bit more detail with Thesis because I don’t think that “Photobloggers” may think there is enough value in it for photography.  Anyways, let’s get onto the WordPress Templates.

Themeforest

Since themeforest is a large database for themes, I’ll link to each specific theme that I am pointing out here. With the other companies, it’s very easy to find the themes. I’ve browsed Themeforest andfound some WordPress Themes that are geared towards Photography and Photoblogs. I have never used a theme from Themeforest, however I have noticed that the author of the themes seem to watch their on themes and answer questions regarding it.  These first 3 Themes are from Themeforest and the ones I found most interesting to pull from their site.

Photo + Blog

Now a dead link.  Unsure if still available to buy as of April 20, 2011.

Very simple WordPress theme that I see more for a portfolio website.  The blog part of it does not offer a large photo there, and the gallery is flash – making it hard to link to a specific photo I believe (something you might want to consider if you are into Photo Friday).  It’s pretty simple and looks easy to use. The gallery gives you nice and large photographs and thats why I would think this is pretty good for a photography website that want’s a blog component built in.

WordPress Photoblog

Now a dead link.  Unsure if still available to buy as of April 20, 2011.

Simply Simple! It’s got the title you probably want for a photoblog that uses the WordPress platform.  You’ve got Nice Large images, and a pretty cool scroll bar to the right for quick access to photos.  I like that the written component to the blog post is underneath the photograph here so that it looks consistent.  There really doesn’t seem to be too much to this but that is why you go through the initial process in part 1 to brainstorm about what you want from your photoblog.

Photo Nexus WordPress Gallery

Photo Nexus is a different bread of wordpress theme for photography.  I wouldn’t consider it a photoblog theme. I feel that the name “WordPress Gallery” fits perfectly.  This would be a great theme for a project website! It would display simple photographs that you created specifically for a project and become an elegant portfolio.  Think about this one if you don’t need the Blog component and just need the gallery.

Black Canvas

This is a strong contender for my future Photoblogs.  I really like how simple this is and the amount of layers that the theme offers.  It’s got all the elements that I like.  Strong “pages” feature, drop-down menus, easy to customize, not flash based and easy to navigate.  The photograph size is something I would like to see bigger.  I bet there is a way to do that, but I would have to purchase the theme to probably play around with it.   That’s what I love about WooThemes and their showcase section! I can see what people are doing and gain inspiration.  This is still a really cool theme and I am sure your photoblog would standout!

Cloudscape

There is not much to say about this theme.  Big images, minimalist design, and shows off your work.  Boomshakalaka? I think so!

Nishita

This is probably one of the first themes I saw a long time ago.  It looks great for a photoblog.  Nishita reminds me of pixelpost though.  If you don’t know what that is, it’s another blogging platform that many photoblogs use.  While it is simple I wanted to include it because it’s still pretty awesome.  As I mentioned, it’s important to know why you want to photoblog and what your long term plans might be.  If you don’t fully know that yet, this is a perfect theme becasue it’s free and it gets your photos online and viewable. Check out the live demo – http://clipthephotos.com/

Tofurious - Soft Tofu 2.1 and 2.2

Free Tofu 2.1:

Premium Tofu 2.2:

There is not really much to say about these theme except that it is elegant.  I am pretty sure David Redding is using this theme for his Wedding Photography website and blog.  The large pictures are great and I am sure this theme does very well with SEO.  It doesn’t look like there are huge differences between the Free and Premium themes. I do like the profile and social media additions to Tofu 2.2 and it has a more elegant feel.   Again, what’s your purpose for your photography site or blog? Important to think about it if you want to kickass.

Photopresspro

I think this quote from their website captures the essence of their Photoraphy WordPress Theme:

That’s one big orange sky! In fact, it’s 936 pixels wide and 720 pixels high, or in photographer’s terms, a full 10×13 inches. Because who wants to see this beautiful (and straight out of camera) image in a paltry 640×480 thumbnail? No one, that’s who.

The header is actually a rotating gallery that fades in and out.  That’s a pretty cool feature as it is dynamic.  I like this photoblog theme because it adds a footer to the page.  So many photoblogs that I have come across do not have much of a footer, especially photoblogs that do not use WordPress.  I think there is a huge value in the footer but you might not. It’s up to you.  If you’re unsure if you’d want a footer or not, I’d consider doing some research first until I get up a post that goes more in-depth.  Very solid theme in my eyes and I am sure it’s not that hard to customize.

Photocrati Photoblog Theme

There are actually a few different variations of the Photocrati Photoblog Theme.  The different names and versions include: Emulsion, Focus, Lightbox, Polarized, and Viewfinder.  They all look similar but with subtle differences.  Here I am showing Photocrati Viewfinder.  This is how Photocrati describes the themes:

Elegant design. Big images. Powerful gallery management. Built-in blogging. That’s galleries and blogging on the same website.

I’d have to agree that it offers large images (something very important for photoblogs), and the built in blog that is separate from the gallery.  Your most recent photograph goes on the home page and people can dig from there. The blog part allows you to discuss your life, your photography career or just expand your website.  I start to look at these types of themes as a multi-level option, or different departments to browse through. I could have everything all on one floor, or I could put something really awesome upstairs and promote people to explore.  Photocrati is currently offering $20 off the price of the theme until the end of August 2009.  Something to consider eh?

Thesis WordPress Theme

As promised, here is the theme that I can’t find any photoblogs making use of right now.  If you know of one, please contact me or leave a comment here because I’d love to see it.   Since I can’t find a photography blog (portfolio or photoblog), I used one of my other sites that is in a transition period to test my idea.  What I did to the theme was change to 1 column and the column is 934px wide.  I made the image 930px wide to fit in the column.  It’s freaking awesome. You just have to imagine a much more unique, and remarkable header image.  I did a really quick mock up and it’s not refined. But I still think it has potential.

Thesis is a very powerful premium WordPress theme.   It’s outstanding in the SEO department (something that a photoblog can sometimes struggle with), very customizable, elegant, simple, clean and did I mention customizable?  I mentioned that Flickr is boring and if you only use Flickr to display your photography, you need my help.  This theme is going break a thread of the umbilical cord and help bring your photoblog to life.   So, you can easily change the header (I didn’t have time but it’s simple and there is all kinds of documentation online about it).  You can change the width of the main content section to what you want for the size of your photographs.  You can have 1, 2, or 3 columns and the benefit to this is change! You could start your photoblog and say you don’t care about anything but having a large photograph as the main content.  But, what if you get the unconventional virus and want to do this for a living??????  That’s right, suddenly you want a sidebar because you’re about to release a book you created on Blurb to showcase your photography (Don’t worry, I’ll have an awesome guide for everyone that’s wondering about what I just talked about).  You do this because you want your loyal visitors to see that you have this awesome book. A simple change to the number of columns and width and you’re done. However, you might not even need to do that because when you change Thesis to only 1 column, the other 2 columns actually act as a footer (you can see this from the second picture).  You can now have more information on your home page.  Massive Value with this WordPress Theme and worth the price.   I hope the few pictures I put up have helped to illustrate what I mean.   Seriously research this theme by going here and checking out the demo.  Remember that I’m helping you be remarkable with your photoblog and photography blogs so feel free to ask me questions and leave comments about what you think. Thesis Gallery Showcase — See killer customizations from around the Thesis community!