Rebel is a beautiful theme with a modern approach to photography websites. The monochromatic tones bring full attention to the photographs in black and white and color. Its pixel perfect styling is ready for desktop and mobile. Complete with a homepage slideshow, multiple blog, page and post templates.
In 1976, the volcanic plains in Cappadocia in Central Turkey received the distinction of being declared a UNESCO World heritage site for its truly unique landscape. Full of small hillocks, slender columns and hidden entrances to vast underground caverns, it is more like some imagined fairyland, peopled by legendary creatures such as Tolkien’s Hobbits or Trolls out of Scandinavian folklore!
Most surprising of all is that the architects of this marvel of strange and stark beauty are three volcanoes surrounding the plains that died about 2 million years ago! Of course, erosion due to wind, rain and streams of water running down the sides of the dead volcanoes did the actual sculpting over thousands of years until an alien landscape emerged for modern men to marvel at.
During their active lives, these three volcanoes, deposited about 100 to 150 feet of soft volcanic layers called “Tuff”. Erosion formed clusters of hillocks called “Hoodoos” and slender columns with a capping stone that the French called “Fairy Chimneys”. Most surprising of all is that while Hobbits and Trolls are imagined, real people inhabited some of the Hoodoos and the underground cities!
Those of us familiar with JRR Tolkien’s mythical dwarfs know that Hobbits are short, retiring creatures capable of heroic feats of courage, if required. They live in cave houses in the fictional Middle Earth.
We do not know just when Cappadocians began to live inside Hoodoos. The Hittites who first populated Cappadocia lived between 1800 and 1200 BC. It is entirely possible that some Hoodoos were converted to dwellings some 1500 years before Christ. Amazingly, a few Hoodoos are inhabited even to this day!
Entire colonies grew up in a cluster of Hoodoos, with connecting streets and passages. Many caves already naturally formed, were extended. Sometimes several levels were connected together by internal passages. Cave openings had doors or windows built into them to protect the inhabitants from the inclement weather outside.
Only very few Hoodoos are inhabited today. Due to risk of cave-ins, construction of new dwellings in Hoodoos is no longer permitted and those that still live there are being encouraged to move out to normal buildings. However the ones still in use as private residences draw tourists like a magnet.
Replacing the private Hoodoos are some cave hotels converted from the larger ones. The interiors are split in several levels and the walls are often actual cave walls. Fitted with all modern amenities, these cave hotels are preferred over conventional ones by many tourists.
In Scandinavian mythology, trolls may be either dwarfs or giants. The common factor, however is that they all hate humans! In Tolkien’s Ring trilogy, trolls make formidable opponents and men generally fear them. However, instead of frightening others, some Cappadocian “trolls” were forced to live underground out of sight for fear of repeated invasion by hostiles!
The fact that the Tuff layers are easy to dig down into may have led to the practice of digging concealed underground caverns by early Greek Cappadocians who had converted to Christianity in the 4th Century. They were seeking refuge from invading forces of the still Pagan Greeks and Romans who overran parts of Turkey. Even after the Eastern Roman Empire was established in Turkey under Emperor Justinian, the travails of the Christian Cappadocians did not end! They continued to be hunted by the Moslem Seljuk and Ottoman Turks who came to rule Turkey after the fall of the Christian Byzantines. Finally, the Mongol Timur’s forces attacked them as they came to fight the Ottomans! So they were forced to continue living underground like frightened Trolls, hiding out of sight!
Today several underground cities have been found by Turkish archaeologists in Cappadocia. An excellent example of these is the Derinkuyu underground city. It is an ancient multi-level underground city in Nevşehir Province, Turkey. Extending to a depth of approximately 200 feet, it is large enough to have sheltered as many as 20,000 people together with their livestock and food stores. It is the largest excavated underground city in Turkey so far discovered amongst several underground complexes in that area.
Derinkuyu could be closed from the inside with large circular stone doors. Each floor could be closed off separately. The city had all the usual amenities, such as wine and oil presses, stables, cellars, storage rooms, refectories, and chapels. Between the third and fourth levels is a vertical staircase. This passageway leads to a cruciform church on the lowest (fifth) level. The large 180 foot ventilation shaft appears to have been used as a well. The shaft also provided water to both the villagers above and, if the outside world was not accessible, to those in hiding inside.
The city at Derinkuyu grew to its full size during the Arab–Byzantine wars (780-1180) when large Christian population had to hide from invading Moslem forces. In this period the city was expanded and a network of tunnels was dug to connect it to other underground settlements nearby.
In 1923, there was a population exchange between Turkey and Greece. The Greek Christians were sent over to Greece while Greek Muslims were accepted in Muslim Turkey where there was no need for them to live underground. So, the underground cities were abandoned.
Derinkuyu and similar other abandoned cities were opened to the public in 1969 and remain a very big draw for tourists to this day.
Sadly, although no fairies or Trolls ever lived in Cappadocia, the stories of real people who did live there, their feats of engineering, the landscape around them and their very chequered history is no less fascinating than all the fairytales you can imagine about mythical Hobbits or Norwegian Trolls!
Fearless is a beautiful theme with a modern approach to photography websites. The collapsible floating menu brings full attention to the photographic and text content. Its pixel perfect styling is ready for desktop and mobile. Complete with a homepage slideshow, multiple blog, page and post templates.
Reportage is a beautiful theme with a modern approach to photography websites. The narrow floating menu brings full attention to the photographic and text content. Its pixel perfect styling is ready for desktop and mobile. Complete with a homepage slideshow, multiple blog, page and post templates.
We are very excited to announce our latest theme, Sidewinder. It's a really fun Genesis child theme designed for photographers and photo bloggers.
Sidewinder is a modern twist on a photo blogging theme. Its incredibly fluid design adapts to screens of all sizes. The theme is intended to put your content first and promote your social channels. Sidewinder is playful but still professional with its numerous blog, post, and page templates and widget areas.
Sidewinder is now available for all theme customers and will soon be rolled out to all hosting customers.
Expedition is a beautiful theme with a modern approach to photography websites. The transparent menu brings full attention to the photographic and text content. Its pixel perfect styling is ready for desktop and mobile. Complete with a homepage slideshow, multiple blog, page and post templates.
For the first time ever we are offering deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday on three of our products.
These deals will last from November 29th - December 2nd so be sure to take advantage of them now before it's too late.
NextGEN Pro is 25% off making it $29/year instead of $39/year and the discount will be applied on checkout. Visit the NextGEN Pro page to see demos and what's included in in the plugin.
The Photocrati Theme is 27% off making it $65 instead of $89 and we are throwing in our popular Photographer's SEO eBook. This discount will also be applied on checkout. Photocrati is our WordPress theme designed for photographers and used by over 17,000 photographers and creatives. It's an all-in-one solution: website & galleries & blog. With it you can create your portfolio, sell photographs with eCommerce galleries and so much more. There are 60 beautiful, built-in styles to get started, additional styles in the free design library and you can customize everything easily without knowing code.
The Photographer's SEO Community is 55% off making it $44.55/year instead of $99/year using the code BFRIDAY on checkout. The Photographer's SEO Community is filled with enourmous amounts of educational information and guidance to help your photography website rank higher in search engines.
Again, these offers expire at the end on Cyber Monday (12/2/13) so please don't wait too long.
In addition to our own deals, we wanted to let you know about some of the others from around the photography industry:
Thanks for reading and enjoy the savings,
Scott
Sometimes finding the photography website templates you want is much easier when you pick a company that provides many child themes and presets.
This way you're not limited to just one theme for the long haul, and you have the ability to change the look of your photography website at any given time.
Photography website templates come in all shapes, sizes, colors, functionalities, friendliness and so on. By friendliness I mean cross browser and cross devices.
Below I am going to share some of the top WordPress theme developers that have a variety of photography website templates. Each one has a collection of themes, child themes and presets available for purchase and some for free.
Simply click on the graphic for each company to visit their websites and demo their photography website templates.
How can we not share our own photography website templates? The Imagely Theme is very different from all the rest. I say that because the Imagely Theme is one WordPress theme with many built-in presets and downloadable presets.
The Imagely Theme comes with 80+ built-in presets (styles), has over 20,000 photographers who take advantage of the simplicity and ease of customization. The theme is designed specifically for photographers so they stop fussing with their websites and get back to doing what they do best... make photographs.
At $139 for the theme and all 80+ presets, NextGEN Pro with print lab integration, the Imagely Theme is a fantastic option.
Elegant Themes is a very popular theme shop on the market and have a few photography website templates under their belt.
They utilize WordPress features like the media library in order to create galleries. Some of their themes also use built-in sliders for slideshow-type effects.
The theme collection at Elegant Themes is a low price of $39 or $89 if you want the original Photoshop files to further customize your website.
Telsa Themes is a new company on the block that sells one theme for $35, their entire collection for $45 or $65 with the Photoshop files.
Tesla Themes was created to offer modern designs at a low price. Because they are still kind of new they don't have many themes but the ones they currently offer are very neat.
StudioPress is one of the leading WordPress development companies out there. Their Framework, Genesis, is used by some of the largest companies and many photographers as well.
StudioPress usually designs their themes with a specific niche in mind like magazines, news sites, photographers, bloggers and more.
The StudioPress photography website templates are not your typical photography themes that you would imagine for photographers but are well worth seeing.
The StudioPress themes range from $80-$130 or $399 for the entire package.
WP Zoom definitely makes impressive WordPress themes, as their banner states. Their photography website templates are more portfolio themes than specific photography themes but still worth mentioning.
They have a very different pricing structure than the others I've already mentioned. WP Zoom charges $75 for one theme, $125 for one theme with the Photoshop files and $199 setup fee + $19 per month for their membership
Themify has a variety of photography website templates ranging from flat design to full screen and even metro design like Windows 8. Their prices range from $69 to $89 depending on the package and whether you want the Photoshop files or not.
Themefuse has a variety of photography website templates and portfolio themes and has a similar pricing structure to that of WP Zoom. Themefuse charges $49 for a theme, $79 with the Photoshop file, and $199 + $17/month for the club membership.
ThemeHunk creates themes and plugins for Business, Magazine, WooCommerce, Photography, and more. They have created many top-selling WordPress themes and plugins. All Themes in ThemeHunk come with a One-Click Demo import feature. Themes price range from $59 - $99. Get Full Membership and access to all Premium Themes and Plugins at just $169.
Obox Themes has created a variety of portfolio-style WordPress themes. There is one particular photography website template that stands out above the others, and it's called Picks. Obox sells their themes for $139 for the Photoshop file and editable CSS file or $19 a month for their full club membership.
So as you can see there are a variety of great options to choose from. Each theme company has a variety of themes, child themes, and presets to make your photography website stylish.
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