How to create an image gallery in Wordpress

We spend quite a bit of time discussing sharing our images here, there, and yon on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as on custom-built platforms such as Photoswarm or Photoshelter, but we don't tend to talk so much, if at all, about good old Wordpress. I've no idea why we tend to overlook CMSs—perhaps because there's an assumption that you should know what you're doing if you have one—but at least for once, I thought we'd change that. [gallery ids="6934,6938,6939,6935,6936"]

Wordpress benefits from a huge number of plugins that you can use to augment your website-running experience, from free ones to premium ones, to plugins that block spam to those that manage your editorial calendar. But if you want to insert a simple gallery of images into a Wordpress post, there's no plugin required. You can manage it directly the Add Media function. It's not the most glamorous of galleries—it doesn't offer a carousel, for example—but it does allow you to sample a selection of images.

Create a new post

That's an obvious place to start. Give it a title, add the text that you want, create some tags; all the usual.

Hit the Add Media button

Go to add images just as you usually would. Hit the Add Media button towards the top left of the page.

Select Create Gallery

You'll automatically find yourself on the Insert Media panel. On its top left you'll see three options: Insert Media, where you already are; Create Gallery; and Set Featured Image. (There's Insert from URL just below those, too.) Choose Create Gallery.

Upload or select your images

If you've already uploaded the images to your Media Library, go ahead and select them now. Otherwise choose the Upload Files tab and go ahead and upload your chosen images from your computer as you usually would.

Create your gallery

When you've selected your images, press the 'Create a new gallery' button at the bottom right of the page.

Now you get to organise your gallery, deciding on the order in which you want the images to appear (drag-and-drop to re-arrange them), in how many columns you'd like them arranged, and whether you'd like the images to link through to an attachment page when a viewer clicks on them. Don't forget to add captions if you need them, too. Do that beneath each image. Tap Insert Gallery and you're done!

If you'd like to try a carousel of images, you might want to check out the Jetpack plugin, but otherwise, this should keep you in image galleries for the moment.

Snapping pictures of pictures. Why?

Over at Gizmodo on Saturday, they asked the question 'What's so wrong about taking photos with an iPad?' I've covered the 'using the iPad as a camera' issue before, so I'm not going to rehash it because that would be boring and actually it rather misses my point because what caught my eye was the image choice to illustrate the article. It was of a young woman using her iPad to photograph impressionist paintings in a gallery. This. This is something that I just do not understand. Not specifically using an iPad to photograph multi-layered, complex works of art, normally exhibited in carefully controlled environments, but photographing them at all. What's the obsession?

It wasn't just the Gizmodo article that got me thinking this; it's something that I've noticed before now in various galleries. Rather than taking time to absorb a piece, to let its colours and its story and its brushwork wash over you, people seem to be intent on looking at it through their three inch—or in the case of a tablet, slightly larger—screens, grabbing a quick photo and moving on from it. I cannot determine any pleasure in that I'm not certain how appreciative it is of the artist's skill and talent.

When you have a Renoir worth millions hanging before you, you pay it the attention it demands and the respect it deserves. That doesn't come from a photo snapped hastily with a miniscule-sensored camera that you'll probably never actually look at again. Even if you do look at your snapshot again, it'll never be able to entrance and captivate you in the same way that the original can. I promise you, a pefectly lit, carefully composed medium format reproduction of a Guardi, a Stubbs, or a Fantin-Latour cannot, in any way, compare to the real thing. So don't think that your iPad-snap or point-and-shoot shot will. You're in a gallery to observe the art, why not do that?

It's almost as if people are taking photos to remind themselves that they've actually seen something, rather than really looking at it and being able to remember it for how glorious it is.

Yes, I suppose that people can waste their time and money photographing delicate, intricate pieces of art with cameras of varying quality in far-from-optimal lighting conditions, rather than gazing at it, enjoying it, and absorbing it if they want to. But can they damn well make sure that they do not stand directly in front it, obscuring my view, when I'm trying to do just that?