These days, marketing for a photographers stretches out past the traditional methods of mailers, postcards, portfolio books, and even word of mouth. A website these days is essential for just about any business model, and photographers are no exception.
Moreover, blogging and social networking of one’s work is playing an increasingly important role in the marketing and exposure of countless photographers.
For photographers, blog-portfolio hybrid websites are a killer way to connect with clients, dominate search results, and connect with new audiences. With Graph Paper Press and WordPress, achieving a great looking website has never been easier.
For the precocious readers out there who want to cut to the case, sign up for Graph Paper Press for 25% off – on me – with this code: 4E7AAA3F34
First, a word about WordPress. You may have heard of it, but you’ve definitely seen it. WordPress is a publishing platform that powers millions of websites worldwide, including CNN, eBay, and many more.
While it started out as a content management system primarily for bloggers, WordPress has grown to serve up the content of everything from online magazines to artist portfolios, thanks to its ease of use and flexibility.
One of the beautiful aspects of the WordPress platform is that it’s easy to create templates. These design templates, or “themes,” are readymade designs that help format and showcase your content, whether its written article, an embedded YouTube video, or a photo essay hosted by PhotoShelter or Flickr.
Graph Paper Press is a design company founded by Thad Allender in 2007, and they’ve been making bang up WordPress themes from the start. While WordPress sets the stage, the real star here is Graph Paper Press and their nearly two-dozen fully customizable themes.
WordPress Themes For Photographers
What sets GPP themes apart from the competition is their focus on the needs of photographers and visual artists. With integrated slideshows, gallery options, and designs tailored to showcase images, these themes are the perfect fit for photographers and make using the WordPress platform a breeze to use.
All of GPP’s themes offer easy theme options that let users upload custom logos, change color options, layout, and more without touching a line of code.
Graph Paper Press features tons of great themes for photographers and designers in their library. Just like any WordPress theme, the GPP themes are fully customizable if you know a little HTML and CSS – but if you don’t, the themes feature built-in options for customizing the look of your site without knowing a line of code.
While Graph Paper Press features tons of themes, the below are some of my favorites.
Sidewinder is a new portfolio theme that features a slick horizontal slider. For anyone familiar with the Flash-based image app Autoviewer, the image slider in Sidewinder is very similar, but has the benefit of being a jQuery app, so no Flash is required. This is good for SEO and iPhones alike.
One of the things I love about Sidewinder is that it’s a full-width design, so the slideshows fill the screen beautifully. Whether you’re shooting panoramic landscapes, concert photography, or weddings, the images simply look great.
In addition, Sidewinder is built on GPP’s new Base theme framework, which gives users access to an extremely flexible platform using GPP’s custom shortcodes, gallery plugins, custom fonts, and layout options.
One very cool feature to Sidewinder and the other Base themes is the ability to use any font in the Google font directory for a more customized look.
Example – Samantha-Murphy.com
www.samantha-murphy.com | Demo Sidewinder
Widescreen
The Widescreen theme offers a bold, full-screen slideshow for high impact. Beyond the homepage, Widescreen offers a vertical menu system with cascading fly-out submenus, easy integration of a blog and portfolio galleries, and more.
What I love about Widescreen is that you have an extremely high-impact presentation from the moment a visitor hits your homepage. Users can customize the homepage in a variety of ways, but the most compelling option is for a slideshow of full-screen images that can act as a mini-portfolio.
In addition, Widescreen offers a full blogging platform, gallery integration, and more.
Example – GavinGough.com
www.gavingough.com | Demo Widescreen
On Assignment is a theme that creates a hybrid website that blends a traditional portfolio with the ability so showcase the depth of one’s work through assignment case studies and blog features.
What I love about On Assignment is the richness of information you can present, whether it’s fresh assignments and new work, or utilizing the extensive footer and sidebar to build in additional features.
Example – Cohabitaire.com
www.cohabitaire.com | Demo On Assignent
The F8 is a beautiful grid-based theme that takes cues from Swiss design and offers photographers an extremely customizable base for creating a photography blog and portfolio.
Similarly to On Assignment, F8 features a rich homepage that gives users the ability to feature different categories of work, whether these are presented as case studies or less informal blog posts.
Example – OitavoEstudio.com.br
www.oitavoestudio.com.br | Demo F8
If you’re a regular reader to ishootshows.com, then you’re already familiar with Modularity, because it’s the Graph Paper Press theme that powers this site.
I love modularity for its clean design and supreme flexibility. Just like F8, there are tons of options to customize the homepage, whether you want to emphasize individual blog posts or direct people to specific pages.
Beyond the homepage, Modularity offers a framework that is perfect for presenting photography. One feature that I especially like is the category columns at the bottom of the homepage, which does a fantastic job pulling up older and related content that engages viewers beyond the first blush.
Example – JesseSpeer.com
www.jessespeer.com | Demo Modularity
Aside from the badass themes they design, there are a lot of reasons I went with Graph Paper Press to power my photography site over the hoards of other free and premium WordPress themes.
PhotoShelter Integration
Graph Paper Press has partnered with PhotoShelter, the premier professional photo service for professional photographers to seamlessly integrate your blog and portfolio site with PhotoShelter‘s robust photo archiving, licensing, and print sale services.
Since I use PhotoShelter, using GPP was a no-brainer. I love that clients can switch between my blog site and my archive without interruption, seamlessly. GPP and PhotoShelter‘s tight integration make this possible.
Currently, PhotoShelter supports automated integration with the following themes:
However, you can customize your PS archive to match the design of just about any website, including those of GPP’s complete library of themes.
Dedicated Forum Support
A huge advantage to Graph Paper Press is their team of web experts dedicated to answering CSS questions, troubleshooting, and generally getting your site up and running smoothly.
Quarterly and Annual subscriptions include free forum support, which makes customizing your site a breeze.
One Price, Unlimited Options
Like more than one of the themes offered by Graph Paper Press and aren’t quite sure which one is right for you? You’re in luck. With Graph Paper Press, there’s a single fee for all the themes. For one price, you get access to all of Graph Paper Press‘s themes. Download one or download them all – the cost is the same.
Flexible Subscriptions
Graph Paper Press offers different subscription levels based on user needs. The most popular options for photographers are the Quarterly and Annual subscriptions. As their names imply, these levels give you access to the newest updates and support for 3-month and 12-month periods, respectively.
GPP update their themes multiple times throughout the year (and several times a month for some themes), so the subscription term that’s right for you depends on how much support you want and whether having the latest updates is important.
Even at the annual subscription fee of $99, using themes developed by Graph Paper Press comes in at a mere fraction of the price of a custom site with so much customization that you can make your site your own.
If you choose not to renew your subscription, the themes are yours to use and keep for as long as you want.
Still not convinced? Looking for inspiration? Take a look at Graph Paper Press‘s extensive showcase of photographers, designers, and illustrators using their themes:
Graph Paper Press Theme Showcase
In summary, the reason I love Graph Paper Press and their themes is because they make themes that make it effortless to showcase photography and visual art. Whether you’re a live music photographer, an illustrator, or a graphic designer, GPP’s minimal, well-built themes are uniquely suited to let your work speak for itself. Not only that, but GPP’s themes allow users to seamlessly layer in the richness of a blog with the definitive encapsulation of a dedicated portfolio.
If you’re looking for a smarter website to showcase your work, Graph Paper Press has got you covered.
With nearly two-dozen themes to choose from, frequent updates, custom plugins, built-in SEO optimization, and myriad other features, you’ll love Graph Paper Press. I certainly do.
But wait, there’s more.
Who wants to pay full price? We all love discounts, so I want to hook you up. Use this code when you sign up for Graph Paper Press and get 25% off annual subscriptions:
4E7AAA3F34
Here’s How:
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Simply clicking through either B&H or Amazon.com here for your purchases helps me bring you free content like these 6-tips for the new concert photographer, and naturally it doesn’t cost you a cent more. If you do grab some gear, drop me a line! I’d love to hear about what you picked up.
Questions or comments? Leave a comment below, and let me know what you thought of this post.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2011 at 12:01 am and is filed under Photography Gear and tagged with best photo theme, coupon, discount, graph paper press, photo theme, photography website, review, reviews, themes, wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Welcome to ishootshows.com, your source for music photography featuring daily concert coverage, portrait features, and photo advice from professional music photographer Todd Owyoung.
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Graph Paper Press – The Best WordPress Themes For Photographers http://bit.ly/hlRVi4
Graph Paper Press – The Best WordPress Themes For Photographers: These days, marketing for a photographers stretches… http://goo.gl/fb/hPULC
Graph Paper Press – The Best WordPress Themes For Photographers http://j.mp/gbLZEG
Looking to redesign my blog and get a new theme, make it a proper website… Just when I think I have the wordpress theme in mind, another load of good selections come along! Thanks for the extra info, possible back to the drawing board :P
Hey David,
Believe me, I know what you’re going through. I looked at must have been hundreds of WP themes over the last couple of years trying to decide on the ones that were the right fit for what I wanted to do. In the end, GPP was the natural fit, and I haven’t looked back.
Good luck deciding!
Hey Todd,
My biggest problem with wordpress is the FLOOD of spam I get. I can’t keep on top of all the nonsense comments.. how do you combat it?
Thanks!
RT @GraphPaperPress: Humbled by @toddowyoung blog post/theme review: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-… Shhh! Discount code included his post. #wordpress
RT @toddowyoung: RT @GraphPaperPress: Humbled by @toddowyoung blog post/theme review: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-… Shhh! Discount code included …
@toddowyoung @GraphPaperPress Awesome. Thanks so much for the discount! :)
@toddowyoung dude, when you want to do those photos broham?
Hope you don’t mind a somewhat dissenting opinion.
I agree that the themes from Graph Paper Press make beautiful photo blogs. Yours is not the only blog I read that uses these themes.
When I was setting up my photo blog, I signed up with GPP first and tried out some of their free themes. As a lapsed programmer, I found them difficult to configure and was unable to get exactly the look that I was going for.
So I went to Photocrati. Honestly, I was much happier with what I saw there, especially because they include very nice control panels that allowed me to do 99.9% of what I wanted without having to edit the underlying code. I was able to get exactly what I wanted and it was easier.
(Photocrati 4.0 was just released and I haven’t had time to play with all of the new options yet but some of them look to have tremendous potential.)
I hope we can win you back sometime soon, Spike. Most of our free themes don’t have all the design options that are contained in our paid themes. I’d be happy to send you a copy of any paid theme you like, for free, so you can check out all the design options. :-)
Hi Thad, I certainly can’t ignore such a generous offer. My guess is that Modularity is the one that’s a fit – Todd uses it and my friend at fernandogros.com uses it for his inspiring site. I can be reached at spike at spikesphotos dot com. Thanks!
The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
@toddowyoung modularity here, love it!
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
@toddowyoung I just subscribed on Monday! Can’t wait to build out my new site….
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-…
Just updated my WP theme using http://www.prophotoblogs.com/ and am real happy with the ease of configuration and options, but will keep the GPP themes in mind. Thanks for your wonderful blog, always chock full of great info!
Terry
word up – :)
It took me a while to be won over – but when I found the most current versions of modularity and it’s child themes to have adequate interfaces for modifying – I am fully won over – on top of that, I had wanted to finally jump on the photoshelter wagon as well – and their integration seemed key…
Love the new sidewinder theme – but haven’t quite decided if that is something I would use – maybe on another effort other than my main site…
Like you say here – they are so geared to the visual – I haven’t seem many (read any)that were better for the value and integration points.
Humbled by @toddowyoung blog post/theme review: http://bit.ly/hVFw9i Shhh!!! Discount code included his post. #togs #wordpress
RT @GraphPaperPress: Humbled by @toddowyoung blog post/theme review: http://bit.ly/hVFw9i Shhh!!! Discount code included his post. #tog …
RT @GraphPaperPress: Humbled by @toddowyoung blog post/theme review: http://bit.ly/hVFw9i Shhh!!! Discount code included his post. #tog …
RT @GraphPaperPress: Humbled by @toddowyoung blog post/theme review: http://bit.ly/hVFw9i Shhh!!! Discount code included his post. #tog …
RT @GraphPaperPress: Humbled by @toddowyoung blog post/theme review: http://bit.ly/hVFw9i Shhh! Discount code included his post. #wordpress
RT @toddowyoung: RT @GraphPaperPress: Humbled by @toddowyoung blog post/theme review: http://bit.ly/hVFw9i Shhh! Discount code included …
The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
RT: @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
Hey Todd – cheers for the plug, we LOVE our GPP on assigment theme. Love what you’ve done with yours, looks HOT!
Take care,
Ingrid.
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
wow…
thanks so much for the review todd
seems i’m gonna make my own personal blog with this theme…
Wordpress is always makes me impress,especially with their interesting themes..
now with new themes Graph Paper Press for Photographers or creative people,i become more loves with WordPress..
thanks todd once again :D
cheers from Indonesia
RT @toddowyoung: The best WordPress themes for photographers – 5 killer designs by @GraphPaperPress: http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
Everything is great. But what about blogger.com? There are no themes for it?
Hi Tod,
about two hours before I went to bed last night I stumbled upon your post. Man, these informations are exactly those that I have been looking for. For about one year I have been thinking about a relaunch of my concert picture website http://www.stonebreaker.de. But so far I could not decide how to get started.
Your post opened up an entirely new horizon of possibilities: WordPress with a photoblog theme! That’s the solution!
So, last night I could not fall asleep for hours since so many new ideas had started spinning through my head. This morning I dug deeply into the world of WordPress, themes, plugins and widgets …
… so I hope to come up with a new website as soon as the technical questions are solved with my provider.
Thanks for this most inspiring post,
Timm “Stonebreaker” ;-)
Yeaah, I finally did it! After 3 weeks of intense work I relaunched my concert photography website: http://www.stonebreaker.de. It was all triggered by Tod’s initial post about WordPress and its available themes for photographers.
Thanks for this wonderfull inspiration which finally got me going to do my thing!
Cheers,
Timm
http://www.stonebreakerd.de/
RT @toddowyoung Graph Paper Press – The Best WordPress Themes For Photographers http://bit.ly/gMCaBV
Graph Paper Press – The Best WordPress Themes For Photographers http://j.mp/gbLZEG
Todd – Once again I have to give you huge thanks! I took your advice & just created a website on PhotoShelter (hope page slideshow is up now at http://www.asseenbyjanine.com & tonight I will be signing up for Graph Paper Press & transferring my asseenbyjanine blog over to there to integrate with my PhotoShelter Website. So you’ve got some more “partner” commissions coming from me! ;-) Once the whole transfer is complete, I’ll send you an updated link to my “The Making of My DIY Beauty Dish Tutorial” ~ I get hits from you every day, and also almost every day someone else who finds my blog some other way clikcs my links to you! That’s what it’s all about… Again, eteranally grateful for people like you who are helping to move my dream forward!
duh, that was supposed to say “home” page, though I think “hope” page is appropriate cause I have high hopes for where I’m heading! ;-)
Hey Todd,
I recently came across your blog while trying to find more info about shooting shows. I’ve spent the last few years trying to perfect the art, it’s certainly not an easy task.
When I read this post about opening up a wordpress account with a graph paper press theme, I spent some time looking through their free themes and found one I like, and I went and paid for a 1 year subscription at wordpress, but I can’t figure out how to get the theme to integrate on wordpress. There’s no options for uploading via FTP, and it seems the only themes you can use are the ones within wordpress themselves. Did I screw up and signup at the wrong site? Should I have gone to photoshelter instead?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
The problem is that you did your blog at wordpress.com which has very limited options. What Todd is describing is something different (and costs a little bit more) – you have to have your site hosted somewhere else, a place that will likely charge you for hosting, and it has to be a provider that supports the WordPress software (I use hostgator for my photoblog, not too expensive but a little bit slow where I am). It’s very different from the free blogs on WordPress.com but offers about a zillion more options, including the ability to use themes like this.
Hi Todd, love your work. Just read this post and decided to make my own portfolio with GPP theme called “fulscreen”. I know is not the right place to ask, but I’m going crazy ’cause I don’t know how to put my own logo in the main page, would you give a quick tip to do it? I’ve already looked in the supprot page but no explicit answers :(
I love the Cohabitaire.com design. Its clean and fresh and looks great. I love their style too
Just found my website featured on here. Awesome! Thanks a ton!
I got a sweet shout-out that I just came across! http://ishootshows.com/2011/02/10/graph-paper-press-best-wordpress-themes-photographers/
My favourite is the F8 theme. Awesome :)
Todd,
Could n’t agree with you more, I am loving the combination of GPP, wordpress and photoshelter.
I use 2 themes one on my main site http://www.paulnewbery.com using modularity. I have just set up a new site http://www.beingtherephoto.co.uk this is work in progress site and is using Sidewinder.
All the themes look excellent, it’s very hard to pick.
Great review and excellent site.
Paul
Just used your promotion code!
I don’t shot music shows but this site is awesome~!
[...] Graph Paper Press – The Best WordPress Themes For Photographers [...]
I just signed up with GPP because they have EXACTLY what I’m looking for (minimalist and elegant) in my new website. Unfortunately their website has major issues and I’m not able to access anything to download. They don’t ask for you to set up a password in the sign up process but you need one to log in! There’s a spot to have your password emailed to you but it returns an error when you use it! Someone was nice enough to email me a password (apparently randomly generated without my knowledge) but it doesn’t work. Hopefully my site, build from a GPP template will work better than theirs.
They have acknowledged that they’re having password issues (their site also contains a number of dead links) but so far they haven’t figured out how to give me access to the templates that I’ve paid for.
After my initial troubles (being unable to access my account), things have gotten a lot better with the folks from GPP. I had a number of customizations that I wanted to make to my Sidewinder template and really struggled initially with the php and html code required. I’m a total newbie to WordPress, php and html and had 0 experience with it 2 weeks ago. I started reading and posting specific questions in GPP’s forums. I have always gotten a response in under 24 hours and their recommended coding has always given me what I was looking for.
I’m a photographer and looked a long time for an elegant minimalistic theme that would showcase my pictures. The beauty of their themes is the simplicity of them for people looking to showcase their art.