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
A pretty good list, but it's just wrong not to include Max Rive in landscape category. Apart from Adamus, his are the best works I have seen in last 6 months. Ryan Dyar is also great.
http://500px.com/maxrivefotograaf
How can you miss Atif Saeed?
http://500px.com/matif
500 px photos are all hyper shopped. No doubt they are beautiful images but they all have the same look. Scrolling through them ends up being quite numbing...
And no my photos are nowhere as "good" as these if that is your taste but then I actually prefer Polaroid and "proper" street photography...
You Missed
Anton Jankovoy
http://500px.com/jankovoy
really nice list, thx for sharing
Thanks for sharing this amazing list, I also have some great images
(mostly fashion) on 500px here: http://500px.com/Film-Noir-Studio
Blatant self promotion...
<a href="http://500px.com/photo/14510287/wallaby-by-jason-felmingham" rel="nofollow">wallaby by Jason Felmingham on 500px</a>
Lincoln Harrison Should have made it to the list
you've missed me :D http://500px.com/angelodau_Ph-Retouch-Post
Thanks once again for the feature buddy ! much appreciated =)
Thank you for the post
Thanks for the list.
Really an incredible collection. I had many bookmarked, but new ones are awesome!!
Dear Dani,
Could you explain how do you "customize" your flow?
Thanks so much for this article to some very amazing photographers! Thanks Dani! I look forward to checking out more stuff on this website as I just joined. I am impressed!
Awesome list! I just followed just about everyone on this list. Looking forward to some great inspiration. The idea of screenshotting favorites is a good one. I'm definitely going to do that.
Really love Rey's work, its incredible.
Wow! these are awesome! Especially some of the landscape photographs look like paintings!
There is also a good tool to see your 500px stats and it's free https://rocketgraph.com/reports/88-stats-for-500px
thanks for the post. There are some incredible photographers on this list. Love 500px!!
Thanks for this post
Was following you even before :) great work
I wonder if Sean Archer works with models they're not beauty. I only see a collection of beautiful girls. It's not enough.