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.

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.

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.

Comments & Discussion

20 Comments

http://www.joeldelane.com Joel Delane

Thanks for the feature on my site MonkeyNuts!
http://www.usegnini.com Umberto

Check this out: http://www.madridmola.com

Well used photographic backgrounds!

Cheers

U.)
http://www.schrumpfschlaeuche.org Schrumpfschläuche

Looks great. I think about in my next design. If I had a great photo.
http://ansh.thisisitonline.info Amberly | Web Designer

Excellent List.
What a great talent you have presented here.

My favorite is Rebecca Barry and kashmircreative
Their navigation is one of kind.
http://www.radiantphotographyaz.com Breanna Chanson

Thanks for featuring Radiant! We used “Show It” to help us build our page (www.showitfast.com).

Great topic for a blog feature!
http://pinnaclebalance.com Steve

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”
http://www.davykestens.be Davy Kestens

Nice! Thank you for featuring my website!
http://www.tekmiss.com Kathy Rausch

How interesting – this used to be impossible because of bandwidth — great collection of examples!
http://www.google.com/profiles/matrix2007 Jose G. Gonzalez

Thank you very much !!
http://www.dentiststudio.com Zach Hodgins

Very collection of websites. Absolutely beautiful photos and designs!
http://themeforest.net/item/saganowsky/83281?ref=luglio7 Luglio7

Wow, georgeous websites !
Deepak

wow..cool websites…I’m gonna borrow a few ideas from them now :-)
http://bjoern.amherd.net Björn

Great Sites! Thanks for the compilation!
http://lava360.com lava360blog

Microsoft’s Bing also use a single photograph on there page, but i think not as a bg image.. nice selection of websites btw
http://www.financeacar.co.uk Car Leasing Expert

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?
Jason Hubbard

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.
http://www.brettwidmann.com Brett Widmann

These sites do a great job of implementing photo backgrounds. Sometimes that can be hard because they dont relate well or it is too distracting. Thanks for sharing.
http://www.leafletprinting.co.uk Leaflet printing

the backgrounds look absolute quality, nice to see some people just have the talent to be able integrate images into backgrounds.
http://www.cheapleafletprinters.com printing

great backgrounds i couldnt agree more, i love the way in which these photos are used.
http://www.netcars.com Netcars.com

Some cool sites there – also check out Paul Smith Menswear website – top notch photography there!