Photography

$68

Photography is a beautiful, clean, handcrafted theme for amateur and professional photographers alike. Photography’s design gets out of the way and puts the focus where it should be, on your work.

Photography takes advantage of WordPress Post Formats to give your photo galleries a uniquely beautiful presentation. When you select the “Gallery” post format, the images you upload and attach to your post will be automatically formatted into a special slideshow for your readers to enjoy. The Gallery also features handy keyboard navigation, making it easy for everyone to browse your photos.

There are a few options to control how your site displays. You can:

  • Show or hide gallery posts on your blog.
  • Show or hide your gallery titles and image descriptions.
  • Choose to use captions on your gallery showcase page.

Photography also features two color schemes, selectable from your Theme Options page. The default is the dark theme (seen in the demo), and you also have the option of the light theme, seen below.

Photography’s Theme Options menu gives you access to some nifty features:

  • Add a custom logo image.
  • Add handcrafted RSS, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook icons to your sidebar.
  • Control your galleries’ image cropping, height and auto-play functionality.

Setting up your home page

The demo home page uses one of Photography’s custom Page Templates. Creating a home page like the demo site is easy! Just follow these steps:

  1. Add a new empty page called “Home” and choose the “Homepage” template.
  2. Upload images to your homepage using the WordPress image uploader.
  3. Create a new page titled “Blog”, leave it empty, and publish it.
  4. Navigate to Settings → Reading.
  5. Choose “A static page” from the “Front page displays” option.
  6. Set the Front page to “Home” and the Posts page to “Blog”.

You don’t need to insert the images into the content – Photography automatically uses all images you’ve uploaded for your front page.

Setting up your gallery page

The demo gallery page is also just a custom Page Template, which means setting up your showcase is as easy as:

  1. Adding a new empty page named “Gallery” (or whatever you want to name your gallery page) and choose the “Gallery” page template.
  2. Add your new page to your menu under Appearance → Menus.

That’s it! The thumbnails on your Gallery showcase page are pulled from the Featured Image of your individual photo gallery posts.

Of course, if you have any difficulties getting set up we’re happy to help you in our support forums!

Note: This version of Photography differs from the self-hosted (WordPress.org) version. Most importantly, the WordPress.com version does not include Flickr integration.

Quick Specs (all measurements in pixels):

  1. Photography is a fixed-width design.
  2. The main column maximum width is 628 except in the full-width layout where it’s 960.
  3. The home page images are 948 by 534.
  4. Individual gallery images can be up to 960 wide.

Photography theme documentation

Creating a homepage

The demo home page uses one of Photography's custom Page Templates. Creating a home page like the demo site is easy! Just follow these steps:

  1. Add a new empty page called "Home" and choose the "Homepage" template.
  2. Upload images to your homepage using the WordPress image uploader.
    NOTE: Images must be uploaded "from your computer", and not from a URL or your Media Library. If you want an image to belong to multiple pages, you'll need to upload it to each individually.
  3. Create a new page titled "Blog", leave it empty, and publish it.
  4. Navigate to Settings → Reading.
  5. Choose "A static page" from the "Front page displays" option.
  6. Set the Front page to "Home" and the Posts page to "Blog".

You don't need to insert the images into the content - Photography automatically uses all images you've uploaded for your front page.

Tip: You could also use the Gallery page template for your homepage layout. Simply choose the "Gallery" page template instead of the "Homepage" template.

Creating your Gallery page

The demo gallery page is also just a custom Page Template, which means setting up your showcase is as easy as:

  1. Adding a new empty page named "Gallery" (or whatever you want to name your gallery page) and choose the "Gallery" page template.
  2. Add your new page to your menu under Appearance → Menus.

That's it! The thumbnails on your Gallery showcase page are pulled from the Featured Image of your individual photo gallery posts (see Creating individual galleries below).

Tip: If you want to add captions to your gallery thumbnails go to Appearance → Theme Options, and under "Gallery page templates" select your style of captions.

Creating individual galleries

  1. Navigate to Posts → Add New
  2. Select the "gallery" Post Format from the Post Format option box.
  3. Upload all of your images via the upload images button. The images will be scaled to properly fit the gallery stage if they are too big. The dimensions of the stage are 960px x 540px.
    NOTE: Images must be uploaded "from your computer", and not from a URL or your Media Library. If you want an image to belong to multiple galleries, you'll need to upload it to each individually.
  4. Set a "Featured Image" by clicking the "Set featured image" link. This will be used as the thumbnail on your Gallery page.

Tip: While using the uploader hold down the SHIFT key and select multiple images at once.
Tip: If you are using Photoshop the Image Processor tool found under File → Scripts → Image Processor makes it super easy to batch resize an entire folder before uploading.

Removing images from galleries or the homepage

Images are automatically linked to your gallery or homepage when you upload them, so to remove an image from a gallery or homepage, you need to delete it. To do this, please follow these steps:

1. Click the Add Media button;
2. Switch to the Media Library;
3. From the drop-down menu, select Uploaded to this page;
4. Select your image;
5. Click Delete Permanently;
6. Close the window.

Using private galleries (great for clients)

  • Create a new gallery post and set the post Visibility to "Password protected"
  • Copy the permalink, give it to your client (along with the password), and you are all set! Password protected galleries do not show up on your main gallery page.

Creating multiple Gallery pages

If you'd like to create multiple Gallery pages with each showcasing different galleries, you'll need to do the following:

  1. Add a new empty page named "Gallery" (or whatever you want to name your gallery page), choose the "Gallery" page template, and save your page.
  2. Go to the Edit Post screen for the gallery post you want to include.
  3. Get the ID of the Gallery: Look at the URL of the Edit page. It should look something like:
    http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=123&action=edit
    post=123 indicates the ID of your gallery post (123 in this example).
  4. Go back to the Edit screen for the "Gallery" Page you created in step 1
  5. Insert [gallery id="123"] (make sure to add quotes around the ID) into the content of the page.
  6. Repeat 2-5 for all galleries you want to include, and you'll have a custom Gallery page.

Note: Make sure to put spaces between each [gallery] shortcode, otherwise WordPress will ignore all shortcodes after the first.

Color Scheme

Photography comes with two built in color schemes. Dark (the default) and light.

Gallery post options

  • Disable the Gallery title and description: This refers to the post content and Gallery title. If you check this option it will be hidden.
  • Disable image descriptions: There is a small info icon that automatically shows up in the top left corner of each image. Set the image title and alt tag to display a title and description for each image, or check the box to disable the info icon.
  • Enable image hard cropping to the stage size: Automatically crop all images to fit the size of the stage (default is 960px x 540px).
  • Enable auto play: When this box is checked the gallery will start cycling through the images automatically.
  • Set a custom gallery stage height (default is 540 pixels): Change the gallery stage height to better accommodate your photos. Be sure to include the number only (no px).

Gallery page captions

You can choose a caption style for the Gallery page template. By default, captions are off. Selecting basic captions adds the gallery title below the gallery image. Selecting fancy captions makes the gallery title appear when you hover on a gallery image.

Subscribe Links

You have full control over the social icons that show up in the top right corner of your blog. Simply enable the specific service and enter your username or link (whichever is specified).

Setting a featured image that is not included in your gallery

Sometimes, you'll want to set a featured image for your gallery that is not included in the gallery itself. By default, WordPress automatically adds all images uploaded to a gallery to the slideshow. However, there is a workaround that can allow you to set a featured image for a gallery without including the featured image in the gallery itself.

First, create your gallery using the instructions above ("Creating individual galleries"), stopping after step #3 (just before you set your featured image). Then, instead of selecting a featured image from the images you just uploaded, go to the Media → Add New screen:

Here, you’ll upload an image that fits the aspect ratio for the featured image a little better – you can crop the image beforehand using an image editing program, or you can use the built-in WordPress image editor to crop your photo after uploading. Since you’re uploading this image separately from the gallery, it will not be included in the slideshow.

After your image has been uploaded through the Media → Add New screen, follow these steps:

1. Back on the Edit Post screen for your gallery post, and click set featured image;
2. Switch to the Media Library;
3. From the drop-down menu, select Uploaded to this page;
Then, select the image you just uploaded, and click Use as featured image.

After completing these steps, your gallery should have a featured image that works with Photography’s dimensions.