How to use the fotoblossom Facebook Timeline Cover Photoshop Action… whew, that’s a mouthful! What this does is allow you to create cool looking photo collage Facebook timeline covers faster than if you were to try to do it all by hand. The Photoshop action actually will run from Adobe Bridge or even Lightroom… Read More
WordPress is a fantastic platform for photographers – it’s easy to set up, easy to use, and there are loads of ways to upload your photos on the go using various mobile apps. Theme designers know how much photographers love WordPress and so there’s no shortage of WordPress photography themes that you can use on your website. Read More
Just in time for holiday gift-giving comes all new awesomeness from Blurb! I really love Blurb because the quality of the books you get is unmatched. Really, if you’re planning on ever making a book of your artwork, photos, poems, whatever do yourself a favor and get it through Blurb. I wrote about Blurb in 2008 when I ordered my first book and since then have made several.
And now Blurb is making it even easier to create your own books… Read More
A new script font has been released by Ale Paul from Sudtipos called Poem Script… and I’m totally liking it and think that it’s going to be wildly succesful amongst wedding photographers and designers who do stuff for weddings.
A really nice Video Specimen directed by Santiago Idelson was created as well as a really nice looking photo specimen which you can see a few images of below. Photography by Sergio Recabarren. What do you think?
If you are running an amateur photoblog you might be interested in this list of 23 Free wordpress photography themes. If you run a business you might be interested in premium photography wordpress themes.
Simple, clean grid layout, menu customization, fully widgetized, easy to produce post thumbnails and more.
Mansion features a flexible-width thumbnail grid for both images and photo journal entries. This theme is for those who want to primarily showcase their photographs and maybe occasionally write blog posts.
One-column photography and multimedia theme. Easily present your latest photos using a minimalist side-scrolling homepage. Fully widgetized and of course WordPress 3.0 menu support.
This theme has different layouts and color schemes available. Also backend theme options, auto sizing thumbnails (built-in script), custom page templates and more.
Theme options, easy to use, thumbnail resize, jQuery integrated. Keeps your images in focus using a creative yet professional layout.
Clean portfolio-style theme. A large block for featured projects and images and blog posts navigation in the sidebar.
Gallery/portfolio theme with a unique grid layout. Uses the jQuery Masonry plugin to arranges elements.
Two and three column WordPress theme that focuses mainly on showcasing portfolios. Clean grid layout, fully widgetized + +
Unique rounded edges. Recommended for video or photo heavy blogs. Footer widget area, featured video slider, threaded comments, full-width page templates.
Clean & Simple Portfolio style theme. 2 columns, widget ready, adsense ready, jQuery integration+.
960 grid, Flickr integration, widget ready, easy to configure with built in options.
Theme options, optional featured posts, support for video and gallery embedding, optional EXIF data display.
Extremely simple and therefor timeless. No fixed width, no widgets.
Simgle column. Widgetized sidebar footer, iPad/Mobile compatible, roll out tags, customizable profile selection ++.
Simple, 1 column. Posts display in a timeline. Scrolling timeline, inline loading of posts, pages and YouTube videos and more.
jQuery slide hover effect on thumbnails, lazyloading for thumbnails, built-in social media links for all items and more.
Featured slider, many theme options, customizable/widgetized footer.
Same as the previous theme, photofeature, but with a simple flash banner instead of the featured photos slider.
Similar to the previous two (photoflash and photolounge), only simler. No featured section, no flash banner. Clean and simple.
Very stylish theme with own twitter widget, own jquery gallery, many options, jQuery-powered header and more.
Clean and simple. Several styles/colors, advanced theme options panel, colorbox image pop up, contact form, auto image resixing ++.
Logo customization, custom theme layouts, custom footer text, exclusive widgets.
Horizontal scrolling. Meant to feature photos only. Easy to use with Flickr, no comments.
These are the free wordpress themes I could but there might be more out there. If you think you found one that should be on this list please leave it in the comments below.
You might be interested in my post on photography website templates if you aren’t running wordpress to power your website.
Even though I’m a big fan of WordPress, not everyone is comfortable with it. Some people still want to use straight HTML templates for their sites. If you’re familiar with editing HTML by hand or in an editor like Dreamweaver then these templates will help you get started. Just like any site template you can customize these till your heart’s content.
This is a list of HTML photography website templates that you can use for your photography website.
Galleria is a very clean and professional looking HTML template for photographers. Show off your work with this easy to customize and fully featured HTML template. You get a detailed help file with additional options like choosing between 2 different javascript galleries and 12 color schemes.
Galleria Features:
Photoworks is a modern web 2.0 style html site template for photography or portfolio websites. This theme has a dark color scheme.
The Photon site template simulates a flash gallery. Everything is loaded via ajax. Photon includes a working contact form and a page template that fits any resolution. The perfect template to show off your photographs and images.
360Photos is a clean and minimalistic template including a Jquery powered fullscreen slideshow. The layout is based on the 960 grid framework.
The background can be a single photo or a slideshow controlled by the left sliding panel. It resizes automatically, no matter the size of the browser window. You can add as many images as you want.
Features
Fotofolio is a unique custom designed photography portfolio template created for photographers that require a high impact web presence but can be used for any type of artist’s portfolio ( webdesigner, graphic artist, painter etc).
Focal is a clean, professional style photo gallery, for photographers wanting to present their shots, or for designers/artists wanting to showcase their portfolio work.
Features
Famous Photography Template is an html/css template created especially for photographers, digital artists, designers, also perfect for any company or freelancer that want a nice portfolio gallery.
The template is built with a simple look, a thumb gallery slideshow on main page, that is the main focus of this theme, where you can featured your best photos, desings, illustrations etc. A lot of new features you can find in this template like: jquery portofolio gallery slideshow using a quick ajax filter, Cufon titles replacement, fancybox to popup bigger pictures and descriptions, blog page, contact validation form and others.
This premium photography template has lots of features and a clean layout.
Features
This modern photography template is quite impressive and you have to see the demo to get the full effect of this nice template. This screenshot is from one of the inner pages but it has a really nice looking homepage. The jquery it uses makes the transitions really smooth and adds a nice effect.
Pro Gallery Website Template is a fixed layout with two columns. This template is best suitable for a all type of showcases, projects portfolio for personal and company websites .
Features a jQuery slider for featured photos sliding.
Boutique V2 is an easy to setup and customize photography template. Its XHTML and CSS valid and is jquery powered in every aspect and compatible with every major browser.
The galleries are paginated automatically, you just add images in a list.
This template is a complete website designed from the ground up to function first and foremost as a portfolio, then as a comprehensive website that can be used for just about any site that needs a beautiful layout.
This theme is ideal for artists, designers, photographers, and other creatives that are in need of a portfolio template that is professional and “to the point”. Even if you don’t need the huge image gallery page, this template will also work great for sites that need to showcase a few images above each content-page in a slick, sophisticated way. Here’s what you get with your purchase:
This template is not just a template, it’s fully coded and linked portfolio website, which contains 25 pages. Just edit paths or overwrite images, change some texts and upload.
Features:
FocalPhoto is a theme that can be used as a photography portfolio. The site is completly coded an it’s very easy to add extra images and categories to the site. Included with the theme is my Image resizer script that will take care of generating thumbnails and crop the images on the fly.
Sanfolio is a simple and clean template for photographers to showcase there work.
Template includes:
This theme is best suited for a photography and personal portfolio website as well. Template works in all the major browsers, and has massive features to use for your next projects. For most of the part you can just follow the HTML with commented codes. It’s having all the generic layout options and for photography website.
Features:
Unibox is a unique and professionally-designed template dedicated for people who love simplicity and want a clean website. This site template is truly unique and really does give a professional impression.
It comes loaded with unique features and special site-wide visual and navigation effects. It use the jQuery framework along with popular and custom-made plug-ins. Unibox is a one page site template!
UniFolio Website Template is a clean looking website with light weight code best suited for all type of portfolios, show cases, photographer websites, etc.
It comes with 6 skins along with complete dark color, other colors you can create within seconds by just adding colors in css file.
So there you have it, 17 premium photography website templates. They aren’t free but they are pretty cheap. They make a great start to any photography website.
Photo Nexus Theme is a 2 column , 2 color variation ( Bright and Dark) WordPress theme.
This theme is great for those who need a convenient way to publish and showcase a self managed gallery of photos, artwork, etc.
The theme features modern yet minimalistic style so that your work will be guaranteed to be on focus. The theme comes added with Admin theme options so you won’t need to manually edit the files to get it running.
View Demo & Buy – Price $35
The world is facing economic hardships. The economy however hasn’t come to a complete halt though. People are still looking for photographers and photographers are trying even harder to increase business now that times are a little bit tougher.
(The things I list in this post aren’t solely for photographers btw, they’re for anyone who has a business.)
This is the time when strong businesses thrive and the weak fail. This is the time when it’s essential to hone your marketing skills to bring in new business.
If you’re a photographer and you want to boost your business in these trying times then there are things you can do when you’re not shooting to increase your revenues. I’m going to focus on the web because it’s the cheapest method of marketing and the easiest way to bring in new clients.
To a lot of people search engines are their main means of bringing in new sales (it is for me). That is because they rank on Google, Yahoo or even MSN for keywords people are using to find what they offer. If you’re the first business people find when they go online to look for information or services this means increased sales. That is why SEO has gotten so popular over the years.
If you build your site in accordance to SEO guidelines then you’ll be on your way to the top of the search engines. There are many rules to SEO but if you follow just a few you’ll be doing better than 90% of other photographers in your market. So the first of the 3 ways is making sure your site is as SEO optimized as possible.
Are you on Google Local?
The second method has to do with local search. You can rank on Google very quickly by listing your site as a business in your local area. All you have to do is search Google for “Google Local Business” and the first listing that shows up is Google’s where you can add your business.
What this does is allow you to list your business details including your URL to Google Local and also Google Maps. People searching for your service or business can then find you more easily in their location. Local business listings show up before organic listings in most cases. This depends on what keywords people are using to search of course, but being listed in Google Local is an easy way to get a front page listing in a matter of days.
Another way to get attention is giving away coupons. Google printable coupons are a free and easy way to bring in more business. You decide what your coupons should say, then customers print them out and bring them to your store.
The third method is social networking. Networking is crucial to any business and has become a lot easier due to the many social networks online now. If you’re a true marketer you can’t ignore the fact that Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin and even Youtube have millions of users who are all interested in certain things, have certain connections and all have needs.
If you’re not taking advantage of social networking right now then you are missing out on a huge audience. Youtube alone has already surpassed Yahoo as the second largest searched site on the web. That means more people search Youtube then they do Yahoo.
People might be on Youtube for different reasons but you can take advantage of this by educating, entertaining or even showing off your work. You already have digital media in the form of photographs. Put those photos into a slideshow video and upload it to Youtube, Googe Video, Yahoo Video, Vimeo, Revver, Viddler, Metacafe or even AOL. To simplify things you can upload to multiple sites in one fell swoop using a service called Tubemogul.
Don’t forget to brand your videos with a URL back to your site. You can use free video editing software from Microsoft called Movie Maker, Videospin from Pinnacle or even Jumpcut. Brand your videos with your logo, URL and even by giving a quick presentation at the end which includes yourself talking. People love to see other people talking. They should be seeing you next! If you haven’t capitalized on social networking yet then shame on you. The world is out there waiting for you.
If you want to take all your marketing efforts to a new level then give something of value away for free. Give away a PDF ebook on how to take the best photographs, how to save money on their next photo shoot or how to make their photos last a lifetime. If you can put together an informing ebook on a topic people will enjoy and value you’ve just gone a step further than the majority of photographers out there. And this will set you apart big time.
The economy is bad. Everyone knows it. But it’s not the end. If you have some free time right now be sure you are making every effort to market yourself. Marketing online is the cheapest and easiest method available. And don’t forget the offline world where the majority of people reside. That’s very important too. I’ll talk more about marketing offline in a future post. Good luck!
Looking for the perfect wordpress theme to display your photographs? Are you looking for a more professional photography website? Or maybe just a photo blogger?
If you’re a photographer or artist and you want to use wordpress to run your site there are some themes available that focus on photography you can use. WordPress is free to use and it makes running a website a lot easier then it used to be. Below is a list of wordpress themes specifically geared towards photographers.
In a hurry? Jump to any theme now: Deep Focus, Photocrati, Chocolate WP, Photorific, Core Theme, Brick+Mason, Family Tree, Photo PurePress, Showcase Theme, Pixelhappy, Gallerific Theme, Kin, Modern Business, Photo + Blog, Dandelion Theme, Nexus, Atlantica,
Deep Focus is a premium photography theme geared towards photographers from ElegantThemes and it is quite impressive and you can grab it for only $39.95. You also get access to all their themes with great support.
Photocrati offers a wordpress theme geared towards photographers which includes 15+ different styles. It is a simple straight-forward theme for the amateur or professional photographer.
Photocrati 4.0 has just been released with new gallery management and ecommerce capabilities. That’s right, the new 4.0 theme has built-in eCommerce galleries. Be sure to check it out.
It is now also iphone/ipad/ipod compatible! View the demo
Chocolate WP is a brand new WordPress theme that has a lot of great new features. It showcases your photos in full width so that they encompass the entire browser window which looks great on wide screen monitors. It also works with the woothemes Tumblr app allowing you to create posts like you do on tumblr, which is very convenient. A full review is coming soon. View the Demo here.
The Photorific Theme is a new photography WordPress theme that features full-width images. You can set as many background images as you want for every page, post, & portfolio item. The image will be automatically stretched to fit the users browser. This theme also comes with a color picker, 30+ shortcodes, 3 widgets, an AJAX contact form, unlimited sidebars and much more. You can also choose your own fonts for regular text, and choose from 7 preinstalled cufon fonts that look great. View the Demo Here.
The Core theme is a more minimalistic theme that offers 3 Homepage styles with a full screen slideshow to showcase your photography in style. It includes a built-in font manager so you can upload your own font. View the Demo here.
The Brick + Mason is named after the fact that it is based on a grid and includes cool new jquery features you have to see for yourself to understand. It utilizes infinite scrolling so users don’t have to leave the page to experience all your photos. This theme also uses the jQuery masonry plugin so the content will fit any browser size. If you’re looking for a cool minimal style theme with unique features this one is pretty good. View the demo.
Family Tree is a child theme for the Genesis framework from StudioPress. It is pretty unique in this list of themes as it has a more cutesy design to it making it perfect for mom bloggers, photographers or crafts blogs.
PurePhotoPress is a professional WordPress theme for photographers. Creating your photo gallery website has never been so easy!
The Rich ShowCase theme is a well-designed solution for your portfolio and photo gallery demands. The theme lets you publish photos in hierarchical galleries, and albums. Besides that, the Rich ShowCase theme takes care of all your blogging needs as well.
Pixelhappy theme from Studiopress is a clean and versatile theme which you can use for your photography business. It has many options including 1, 2 or 3 columns, multy-threaded comments and drop down navigation.
Gallerific is a premium theme with a grid based layout and powered by features such as a homepage slider and animated jquery menus.
KIN is a minimalist magazine style photography template (WordPress version). With 2 style variations and support both image gallery and videos.
Modern Business 3 DARK WordPress is a custom written premium theme. Designed for photographers to easily create gallery pages of their work and display perfectly against a dark background – with a splash of color if required in the header areas all from within a custom written admin panel.
Photo + Blog Premium is a 2 column WordPress theme ideal for the Photographer who wants an online gallery along with a blog.
Dandelion is a Powerful Premium WordPress Theme. This theme provides all the main functionality you will need to present your products, work and yourself in an elegant and professional style.
Photo Nexus wordpress gallery is a 2 column , 2 color variation ( Bright and Dark) theme.
This theme is great for those who need a convenient way to publish and showcase a self managed Gallery of Photos, Arworks or Designs.
The theme features modern yet minimalistic style so that your work will be guaranteed to be on focus. The theme comes added with Admin theme options so you won’t need to manually edit the files to get it running.
Photo Nexus wordpress gallery – View Demo & Buy – Only $25
The Atlatica theme is a complete WordPress Theme, designed from the ground up to function first and foremost as a portfolio, then as a comprehensive WordPress theme that can be used for just about any site that needs a beautiful layout.
Are you good with HTML or editing web templates? You might want to consider using an HTML template for your photography site instead of using wordpress. WordPress has a lot of advantages but some people might not need all the features. In that case you can build your site using simple HTML.
I have a post on Photographer HTML Templates that I’ve recently written you can check out.
As a photographer you might also may want to send out a newsletter to remind your clients of upcoming events or specials you may be offering. Which is a great way to stay in touch with your clients and fans. In that case here’s a post on HTML email template you can use. Simply copy and paste in your content.
So this is my list of photographer WordPress themes. I’ve spent a lot of time putting this list together and have just upated it further. All of these themes work with the current release of WordPress 3.0.1
I’m intending to add some more info on how to further help your photography blog or website. If you’re interested then please leave a comment and let me know what you want to know, or learn. I’m happy to help photographers in any way I can so let me know what you need help with and I will try and answer your question in a new post. Hope this post has been helpfull.
If you liked this post you might also like 3 ways photographers can boost business in a bad economy
Please note: I am currently updating this post as you read this… new update coming very soon!
I’ve been a fan of Lomo cameras and Lomography for almost 10 years now because of their uniqueness. Lomo cameras are simply the most fun and creative way to have fun with photography I’ve found. Now logomography.com has released a new Redscale film that will tint your shots in vibrant reds. Awesome!
This is the world’s very first pre-loaded and ready-to-shoot RedScale film – designed to re-cast your image in a sea of powerful and seriously intense red, orange, and yellow tones. With your “red-eyes” fully focused, allow us to show you this wunderbar effect – all thanks to a very special film that’s spooled on the wrong side.
The “Red Scale” effect has actually been with us for quite a while. You see, your average 35mm color negative film has a semi-transparent layer on the back – designed to keep stray light from getting onto the sensitive emulsion on the front. At some point, a few bright photographers got the idea to load the film “backwards” and actually shoot through this protective layer. The result is close to shooting through a reddish-orange filter. But unlike a filter, the effect is a bit unpredictable and varies in strength depending on the subject and light source.
We’ve always loved the effect, but the whole process wasn’t all that convenient. Lomographers do a lot for the sake of their images: processing in the wrong chemicals, taping up seams, tossing film in the washing machine, leaping head over arse, and so on. But if things can be easier – and therefore “BE FAST,” then why not go for it? So we worked with our friendly neighborhood film suppliers and cooked this up: a pre-loaded, ready-to-shoot, and ready-to-rock RedScale film.
Rated at 100ISO and packing 36 exposures per roll it is hungry for sunlight, thirsty for long exposures, and quite unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
Read more here or go buy some already!
You can publish a book of your digital photos super quick and easy using lulu.com’s photobook creator. It’s basically a drag and drop application that runs in your browser. You just select one of a few themes they have and start uploading your digital photos. You can get either a hardcover or softcover book in sizes 9×7 or 8.5×11.
Their software allows you to easily upload your photos, then drag them to any desired page so you control the layout. You can have text below or next to your photos if you like or none at all for a sleek look.
I made one of these for my wife in about 2 hours… take into account I was enhancing all the images with photoshop actions so that’s what took so long. If your photos are already ready then you could have your book made in as little as 10 minutes if you’re quick. That’s how easy their system is to use. I think it’s a cool way to share photos of your kids or whatever with your family/friends. It’s the perfect gift for grandparents too.
This is the first book I’ve done using lulu.com and it was a breeze. Now I just can’t wait to see how it turns out. If good, which I’m expecting then I can easily order more from the product page. Super simple!
View their holiday shipping schedule to see if you still meet the deadline for Christmas. If you missed it you should still give it a try. Better late then never right?
I’ll keep you posted how my book turns out.
Have you seen my flash photo slideshow yet? I just upgraded it to the new Slideshowpro 1.60. I’m also using SSP Director which is a super sweet admin for it. It allows you to create albums and galleries and edit every aspect of your slideshow online. No messing with creating XML files by hand!
Slideshowpro is now even more advanced fully supporting video! What a godsend. Any professional photographer who wants to display photographs on their website should be using this script in my opinion. It is by far the best flash photo gallery slideshow you can get right now.
Yes you can embed your favorite audio track in the slideshow, but don’t! No one likes having to listen to someone else’s favorite music. Not everyone has the same tastes. Also it’s annoying if you’re already listening to music on your computer. Let your photos speak for themselves!
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