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Design Shack showcases inspiring web design, alongside resources and tutorials for you to succeed in the same way. It is carefully curated and edited by Josh Johnson and David Appleyard.
30 Websites With Photographic Backgrounds
In design, the simplest of options are often among the best. Using a photographic background is an easy way to make your site beautifully eye-catching. Below you’ll find 30 examples of sites from all over the world using strong photographic elements as background pieces. Some use pure photography while others mix in illustrations, Photoshop effects, and text. Use these as a leaping point for your own ideas the next time you need a fresh design.
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Landscapes and Nature
Landscapes and natural elements have an inherent beauty that most people can’t help but appreciate. Incorporating these effectively into your designs is a great way to increase your wow factor.
Wilderness House
Casa Do Canto
Christina Lauer
Dar Ogrodu
Grow Media
Food Inc.
Fellow Creative
Ask.com
Hoddows-Gastwerk
People
When looking at a two dimensional image, your eyes will naturally be drawn to faces, especially strong eye contact is present (i.e. when the subject is looking directly into the camera). Incorporating people into your designs is a great way to make a page seem instantly more friendly, personal or even dramatic. The quality of the photography here is especially key when using humans in your site design.
Start Fitness
Rich Brown
Consulta Bern
Leah Haggar
Rebecca Barry
Demotive
Club Juicy
Seth Said
Pizzaza
Kashmir Creative
Tolingo
Radiant Photography
Interiors
Even the plainest of interiors can add a lot of visual interest to a page. Odds are users will expect a traditional web interface when navigating to your site and a real world interior look can often be a pleasant surprise. Choose the photo carefully as it will the tone for the entire site. Notice how much different each website’s general mood and impression is based on the photo selected.
Mets del la créme
Kitchen-Label
Gdruk
Bonterra
Misc
Obviously, you aren’t confined to the categories above. Food, abstract textures, and material macro shots can all make great website backgrounds. The final example shows that a digital portfolio can often be improved by incorporating photographs of live print samples.
Culinaria
Davy Kestens
Faith Fashion
MonkeyNuts
Sven Kils
Conclusion
Use the comments below to tell us which is your favorite example. Also be sure to post a link to your own site if it uses a photographic background.
Thanks for the feature on my site MonkeyNuts!
Check this out: http://www.madridmola.com
Well used photographic backgrounds!
Cheers
U.)
Looks great. I think about in my next design. If I had a great photo.
Excellent List.
What a great talent you have presented here.
My favorite is Rebecca Barry and kashmircreative
Their navigation is one of kind.
Thanks for featuring Radiant! We used “Show It” to help us build our page (www.showitfast.com).
Great topic for a blog feature!
Wow, I think I will add a background image to my blog after seeing this. These all look awsome. @Breanna Chanson thanks for the insite to “Show It”
Nice! Thank you for featuring my website!
How interesting – this used to be impossible because of bandwidth — great collection of examples!
Thank you very much !!
Very collection of websites. Absolutely beautiful photos and designs!
Wow, georgeous websites !
wow..cool websites…I’m gonna borrow a few ideas from them now :-)
Great Sites! Thanks for the compilation!
Microsoft’s Bing also use a single photograph on there page, but i think not as a bg image.. nice selection of websites btw
These are amazing websites and they really stand out, but unfortunately this is not usually good for SEO. Would you have examples of websites that have a great background image and managed to mix this with great SEO?
Check out http://www.irregularmagazine.com for their use of photo backgrounds. The background changes with every issue.
It generally corresponds to the magazine cover page.