Even the best photographers need inspiration. 500px is a beautiful playground for some of the best photographers in the industry, and also one of the most powerful tools for motivation. There’s no sifting through rubbish to find quality work in your feed, which is often a problem with various social media platforms, like Facebook. Here's a list of photographers and their mind-blowing work in 4 different genres you MUST be following.
Before I go to bed every night, I scan 500px to sweep through a handful of images uploaded by some of my favorite artists. My flow is customized to my exact taste, and every image I flip through is better than the next. Unlike similar sites, 500px is all about bringing you top quality content on their website and mobile app. Some photographers only use 500px. They don’t even know about Flickr or Facebook. There are many hidden gems such as Sean Archer that you can only find on 500px – a website specifically designed for professional photographers. I finally convinced Sean Archer to open a Facebook page to feature his work, but before he was only on 500px. Elena Shumilova is another photographer who only posted on 500px until her art went viral a few months back.
When I first discovered 500px, I had no idea who to follow. Over time, I slowly starting customizing it to what I liked and waking up my own creativity and sparking ideas I could only dream of. I came across photographers who inspired me, and were perpetually pushing me to try harder and seek more from my own work.
Each and every person I followed ended up in "My Flow," which is your own personalized news feed. The best part about 500px is twofold: First of all, you can “Favorite” photos and send them to a folder to view later. Second, settings and location are shown under the properties of each photo. This makes finding landscapes and areas to scope out for your own artwork and photos easier to find. I've found dozens of landscape locations to shoot from that aspect of 500px.
Every photographer starts somewhere. Maybe growing up you went to the museum for inspiration. 500px is your very own personal museum, filled with what you want to see. Imitation is the greatest compliment – I recommend you look to 500px and fill your flow with goals and motivation to feed the Artist in you.
Inspiration is everywhere—you just have to know where to look.
To make things easier, you will find a sample collage for each photographer. Feel free to skip to either one of the 4 genres or browse through all by just scrolling down.
Portraits/Fashion/Beauty | City/Architecture | Landscape | Fine Art
Portraits/Fashion/Beauty
^Michael Woloszynowicz^ a truly talented portrait photographer who is also popular for his retouching tutorials, was one of the first people I followed on 500px. Special thanks to him for helping me put this list of photographers together.
^ Chris Lambeth ^
^ Brian Ingram ^
^ Chloe Battesti ^
^ Dean Bradshaw ^
^ Adamo de Pax ^
^ Elena Shumilova ^
^ Jay Russell ^
^ Joanna Kustra ^
^ Kirsty Mitchell ^
^ Lelya Martian ^
^ Lucie Bremeault ^
^ Margarita Kareva ^
^ Pauly Pholwises ^
^ Peter Nguyen ^
^ Светлана-Беляева ^
City/Architecture
^ Alisdair Miller ^
^ Daniel Cheong ^
^ Philipp Goetze ^
^ Philipp Richert ^
^ PK ^
^ Vulture Labs ^
Landscape
^ Alex Mody ^
^Beboy ^
^ Chip Phillips ^
^ Deb Harder ^
^ Jesse Summers ^
^ Jimmy Mcintyre ^
^ Kevin McNeal ^
^ Lars Van de Goor ^
^ Marc Adamus ^
^ Mark Gvazdinskas ^
^ Nagesh Mahadev ^
^ Stian Klo ^
Fine Art
^ Dennis Ramos ^
For those who aren’t familiar with "The Flow" section of 500px: The Flow is a personalized display that shows you images that your friends have uploaded, liked or commented on. On a deeper level, it is based off of the interaction that the people you follow take. Thus following good people results in good quality content from them, but also content that they deem to be high quality. This ultimately is a virtuous cycle that helps you to find more and more good content and photographers. Once you get the hang of it you will see how powerful it is and I guarantee that you will be hooked on it!
Feel free to follow me as well!
Dani Diamond | Facebook | Facebook Page | 500px | Instagram
Just followed all of these amazing artists! Thanks Dani!
Roger that Clay, glad you liked it!
Dani, great post. Thank you!!!
Sure Tam!
Thanks for putting this epic collection together Dani. The collages are such a nice touch.
Michael, A big thanks to you and Dani! And yes, the collage really is beautiful!!
Michael you and Julia K are angels to me. More power and wealth brother.
Thanks so much :)
Too bad there's no Film category :)
utter brilliance, thank you
Sure and thank you!
Awesome list and I follow many of them already. But my two absolute favorites of 500px are Dmitry Ageev and Katerina Plotnikova. They really deserve a spot here :)
Damn I knew I missed someone. How the hell did I miss Dmitry! Katrina I'm not familiar with.
Hehe, yeah, what the hell, Dani? ;)
http://500px.com/katerina_plotnikova I'll let Katerinas work speak for itself.
I actually familiar with her work, I just realized i was looking at her stuff last week. All these names and collages were very hard to keep track of. I'll have to feature her in some other way.
Let me know if I can help in any way
Thanks Dani! I appreciate the nod and want to add some more landscape photographers to the list that I really look up to. Please forgive any name misspellings: Alex Noriega, Ryan Dyar, Ted Gore, Miles Morgan (great at post work and storytelling) Floris van Breugel, Kah kit Yoong,max rive (great compositions) Lincoln Harrison (debatably the worlds best nightscape photographer). There are a lot more but they have difficult names that I'd butcher and I'm on mobile before my first cup of coffee.
Cheers, Jesse. I was thinking those same names--draw so much inspiration from their work, and yours as well. All the Best.
Thanks for the shout-out man! I did make it into the list sort of, since they're using one of my images in Mody's collage :)
Support historical photography project #Euromaidan
http://igg.me/at/hashtagEUROMAIDAN/x/3454929
Outstanding collection! But nothing like having a post make you want to throw your camera into the ocean. :( #hangsheadinshame
You're showing my image in my buddy Alex Mody's collage: http://500px.com/photo/48217760
Sorry about that. Fixed. Your photo was awesome, it must of confused me since it showed up when I search your buddies name.
No prob! It's because I mentioned he was there with me in the description for it. :)
Alex you are a great photographer
I follow you on 500px
Was already following about 50% but was more than happy to add the rest!
Thank you for putting this together Dani! Honored to be apart of this with some amazing photographers!
My pleasure Chris, love your stuff.
Wow. Great list. Followed them all :)
Such an incredible collection of work. Thanks so much for spending the time to do that and sharing it!
Aw meng! This is amazing!... now I need to learn photography all over again :(
Nice! Thanks for putting this together. I love the "Fine Art" work from the various photographers!
Is 500px a place to find clients or is it more the place to get fame among photographers?
What a list. Unbelievably honored to have been included. Thank you very, very much.
Absolutely brother.
Thank you! Stunning list and I've added a dozen of new ones that I somehow wasn't following.
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Love this list! I just recently got into 500px. Check out my work! http://500px.com/ToddSpoth
500px has an Editor's choice which is good.
I follow via RSS
http://500px.com/editors
Portraits and landscapes? Only? Bah
Thanks a million for including me. It's an honour.
Great work Jimmy!
Epic Article!
I can see why these are your favorites, but in terms of the best... Eh, a lot of skillfully processed commercial images, but something's missing... No documentary work, nothing that really gets you in the gut because the image itself is so powerful, as opposed to its styling... You've got a great starting point, now go deeper and show me something where the medium isn't the message.
http://500px.com/efimshev
http://500px.com/Tertius_Alio
Can u do one fr flickr :P
wonderfull selection !!! it would have been better if I was in. (joke) 500px.com/DavidDiNatale. Nice article ;) thanks for the discovery
Damn, I didn't make the list… :p
Great list!! 500px is FULL of great photographer! Hope some day I'll make it into this list :P