These are very cool designs. Some of them seemed a little similar to a couple of Squarespace templates but getting these designs on Wordpress is impressive. With the flexibility of Wordpess, I think more and more people are migrating from SQ.

You could use any of the lazy load plugin which would help image loading and also use a static caching plugin as well.

https://github.com/Automattic/lazy-load

I liked the way Trever Hoehne displayed the images on the front page. I'd love to know how that was done so that a screen loading quickly, as others below it were starting to load in the background. With our big cats, that could really be stunning.

I noticed that most of the graphics intensive sites took 8 seconds or longer to load, which isn't a trade off we can make. We have been thrilled to get our 6 seconds down to about 2 thanks to FlyWheel.

Its always quite impressive, how designers use Wordpress. For years I try that May blog looks different.

The Captain Creative site is f-f-f-f-FRESH! I love how the colors even look retro.

Most of the rest of these use imagery to tell stories, oftentimes in intriguing ways. Check out Racket, LIsten, Trent Walton's site, Design Made In Germany, and Sane.

The workspace photo as a metaphor for expertise is still effective, but I think it *has* peaked and will eventually become cliched. This applies for both the macro (here's our offices) and micro (coffee cup and Mac).
It's difficult to tell a story with photos, that just seems to be the quickest way to do it, and I see everyone do it.

That Seattle Cider site uses photography very effectively, without being blunt.