The savvy photographers out there will know the importance of using social media to promote and share their work. One of the best social media-style sites you can use to for photography promotion is Tumblr.

This website allows users to create their own blogs where they can share original posts and re-blog posts from other users that they like. Tumblr is great for photographers as it can help them to build their web presence quickly and direct more traffic to their websites.

Photography Tumblr themes

If you are looking to get the most out of your Tumblr blog, you should think about customising it. There are many different Tumblr themes for photographers, which have been specifically designed to display photos in a visually engaging way. One of the best themes is “Electrum”. This minimalist theme has a grid layout that is perfect or showcasing photography. It is also responsive so it will work on all digital devices.

Another great Tumblr theme for photographers is called “Depth of Field”. This is a full screen photography theme that allows photographers to showcase their work in a visually engaging way.

Making Tumblr themes out of your photographs

Unless you are a pro web designer and understand coding, it is best to stick to customising themes with your photography, rather than attempting to make one from scratch. You can easily add photograph backgrounds to existing Tumblr themes. To do this, follow the simple steps below.

• Go to your Tumblr blog dashboard
• Click on customise theme on the right hand side of the screen
• Scroll down the page until you reach the ‘background section’
• Click upload and select the photograph you want to use as your background
• Use the preview to check that your photograph looks right and click save

Another way you can change the background of your Tumblr theme to one of your photographs is to use custom HTML. See the steps below.

• Go to your Tumblr blog dashboard and click customise
• Under the themes tab click on ‘use custom HTML’
• Press CTRL and F and type in the word background this will locate the background part of the code. It should look something like this:

body {

background: {color:Background} url(’/themes/4/bg.gif’);

margin: 0px 0px 50px 60px;

font: Normal 13px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

color: {color:Text};

• Replace the URL next to the background with the URL of your image (you will need to have uploaded it onto an image hosting website like Flickr, Photobucket or Tinypic)
• Click preview and then save once you are happy

Make sure your photographs are full size on Tumblr

When you first set up a Tumblr it will only show thumbnail sizes of the photographs you post in your followers’ feeds. To make sure your followers can see the full size version of your images, you will need to go to your dashboard, click the gear icon, go to settings and check the box labeled ‘show full size photos.’

Conclusion

If you are hoping to use your Tumblr blog to showcase and advertise your photography, we highly recommend investing in a photography theme or having one custom built. Grid layouts work particularly well as they allow you to display multiple photos, however single column themes are also great as you can benefit from showcasing full size version of your photographs.

If you are looking to build a photography theme from scratch you will need to design it in a programme like Photoshop and learn how to code. There are plenty of tutorials online, though you will need to be willing to put in time and effort to get it just right.

Image credits: Romain Toornier & VinothChandar