Photography is fun. Interesting. Sometimes even rewarding. More and more people begin to realize that, and the opportunity’s Internet offers to showcase their photo creations. And WordPress is an excellent platform to showcase photos – because of the flexibility and well documented stability, and the huge amount of specialized plugins and themes.

To set up a photo gallery on WordPress you could use some of those nice gallery plugins – or, by using a specialized gallery or photo blogging theme, sometimes simply referred to as Multi Media Themes. Whatever solution you prefer, you sure will have a huge and very exciting selection to choose from – it shouldn’t be a problem to find a photoblog solution that suits you exactly as you wish.

Cashrevelations presents six WordPress photoblog solutions that are free and relatively easy to set up even if you know more about photo than WordPress or blogging.

3 WordPress Photo Plugins

Plugins is a good solution if you don’t feel for changing the appearance of your WordPress blog. There is a lot to choose from, but we would like to mention these three. We could also have mention Cincopa For WordPress, an excellent media plugin – but there could be some fees involved. The Best WordPress Gallery Plugins is a nice post that offers you some reviews and guidance of a few more good WordPress photo gallery plugins.

Yet Another Photoblog
This is a non invasive and handy plugin that will convert your WordPress blog into a full featured photoblog. Easy image upload and on the fly thumbnail generation, self-learning EXIF filter (your cameras tags can be viewed) are some of the features of this plugin.
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oQey Gallery
oQey Gallery is a Plugin for WordPress that lets users create and manage flash slideshows with a non-flash version of gallery built-in for all non-flash browsers and mobile devices like iPhone / iPad / iPod etc. It has a built-in skinnable slideshow and supports music.
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NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a slideshow option. You can add custom templates for your theme and watermark images – the plugin offers you lots of options that will make it easier for you to get a gallery after your taste.
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3 WordPress Photoblog Themes

To say there is a lot of WordPress themes is an understatement. There is a little bit less good photo-blogging themes, but still a huge amount – and since the WordPress platform is so flexible, you can with some basic coding skills easily adapt almost any WP theme for photo blogging. We feature these three, because these three represent an adequate and good alternative and also because we think they are not so well known.

Autofocus+
This is a simple and cleanly designed WP theme especially developed for photographers. Theme options that enable you to customize elements of the theme without touching code. This photo blogging theme comes in a free or paid version.
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Grace
Grace is a contemporary and minimalistic photoblog theme for WordPress – the calm color scheme and big frame put your photos right at the center of the blog and the viewers attention. To use the theme you have to change a few settings on your WP blog.
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Foto Folio
This is an easy to use and stylish WordPress portfolio theme for photographers, or others interested to showcase their visual works – this light WP theme has Jquery and automatic resize integrated for Featured Photos and Image Previews.
View Demo

All three themes are free for download without any previous registration and released under GPL license. For more information about GPL license: A Quick Guide to GPLv3.

Head Image: Joanna Margueritte

What method could be better than a nice photo if you want to put some beauty to your blog or web page. But often when I search through my photos after those nice ones, I realize what an aesthetic catastrophe my image collection is. For some reason, the images have a tendency to be gloomy and boring. Hours of heavy image searching just leads to despair (not really, but almost). One of the most time consuming tasks for bloggers and designers is to find suitable photos. A free stock photography site will be a welcome relief for any Internet entrepreneurs tormented nervous system.

Wikipedia: Stock photography is the supply of photographs licensed for specific uses. It is used to fulfill the needs of creative assignments instead of hiring a photographer.

Cashrevelations.com presents 10 Free Stock Photography sites where you can find high quality images and illustrations you can use for your articles or webdesign.

Instead of showing you screen shots of the stock photography sites we choose to show an example image from their collection. To acknowledge the photographers and also the different stock photo sites we link the photos directly to the original image source.

Again, remember to acknowledge the artist’s efforts and credit the photographer in a suitable way. That is common business etiquette and simply humanly decent.

10 Stock Photography Sites

1. morgueFile – Free Stock Photos
The morguefile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site. Free high resolution stock photographs and reference images for corporate or public use. No registration required.

2. Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain & Freely-Licensed Media Content
Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed media content to everyone, in their own language. This is another favorite with a huge amount and variety of quality images. No registration required.

3. stock.xchng – Free Stock Photography Site
Stock photography community – browse stock.xchng’s huge gallery for high quality stock photos or share yours with others. This site is one of my personal favorites and I can sincerely recommend them as a source of images and inspiration. Registration required.

4. FreePixels – Free High Resolution Stock Photos
FreePixels offers free high resolution stock photos for use in both personal and commercial design projects. Almost 4,000 images are featured in 40 categories, but there is no image updates since August 2009. No registration required.

5. ImageBase – Free Images
ImageBase by David Niblack provides you with free images you can use for whatever you want – personal, commercial and non-profit. The ImageBase site also offers various nice and free PowerPoint Templates. No registration required.

6. Free Stock Photography – A Digital Dreamer
FreeStockPhotography by A Digital Dreamer offers you both free and royalty free stock photography. The main site also has some information and articles for those interested in graphic design, animation and photography. No registration required.

7. Stockvault – Free Stock Photos And Free Images
Stockvault.net is a stock photo sharing website where designers and photographers can meet to share their stock photos and images. All images on Stockvault.net are free for personal and non-commercial usage. No registration required, but advised.

8. The Library Of Congress – Flickr
The Library of Congress has over 8 000 stunning images from their collection on Flickr. Represented here are legendary photos and photographers like Dorothea Lange (with the photo Migrant Mother), Jack Delano and Walker Evans. No registration required.

9. Every Stock Photo – Search Engine
Search engine for free stock photos and clip art for the stock photography community including images of creative commons and public domain and other free licenses. The images come from many sources with the license specified. No registration required.

10. Photogen – Free Stock Photos And Images
Search and download free stock photos in high resolution of animals, agriculture, nature, architecture, backgrounds, concepts, transport, travel and destinations, business and industry – free for commercial and personal use. Registration required.

There is one thing you must not forget if you want to use images from the sites above: read the Terms of Use carefully and do not break them with intention. If you do want to use them in any other way that the license allow, contact the administrator of the site or the photographer or author and ask for permission. Better to be safe than sued.