500px is one of the best websites for photographers looking for inspiration. While sites like Flickr and apps like Instagram are a bit of a free for all, 500px promotes only the best images. Many world class photographers use it to share their work.

I’m a big fan and here are 21 of my favorite photographers on the site.

Margarita Kareva

Margarita Kareva is the first of many Russian photographers on this list. She specialises in taking surreal portraits with limited color palettes. If you want inspiration for bringing your dreams to life, check her work out.

Beboy Photographies

Beboy Photographies is a digital nomad, travelling around the world taking pictures. He’s shot stunning landscapes everywhere from Bangkok to Iceland.

Jimmy Mcintyre

Another travelling photographer, Jimmy McIntyre specialises in long exposure low-light images. If that’s an area of photography you want to get into, you need to check out his work.

Dani Diamond

Dani Diamond is one of my favorite portrait photographers. Rather than carry heavy (and expensive) flashes around, he mainly works with natural light. Even if you’re on a budget, photos like Dani’s are possible.

PortraitsBySam

The mysterious Sam, a photographer working out of Rennes, France, creates some of the best portraits on 500px. His perfectly lit, location shots are some of the images I use for inspiration myself.

Dmitry Arhar

Another Russian portrait photographer, Dmitry Arhar’s work ranges from casual location work to studio headshots. Where Arhar really excels is in his retouching. His models all look flawless but he never pushes things too far. Anyone using Photoshop can learn from him.

Georgy Chernyadyev [No Longer Available]

A Russian professional Photographer, Georgy Chernyadev uses color in a really interesting way in his work. Every one of his images has a perfectly chosen color scheme that amplifies the mood of the shot.

Elia Locardi

Elia Locardi is another one of those lucky photographers who travels around the world taking pictures. Almost all his images are made from multiple exposures. This gives them an almost hyper-real quality.

Trey Ratcliff [No Longer Available]

Trey Ratcliff is one of the most famous photographers online. We’ve featured him before in our list of great Instagram photographers to follow. He teaches his techniques from his website Stuck In Customs.

Rey Vladyc Mangouta

A South African photographer, Rey Vladyc Mangouta takes portraits both in the studio and out on location. I love how he combines awesome lighting with post-processes to bring his images to life.

Brian Ingram

Brian Ingram creates some of the best black and white portraits. Even his colour images use muted, limited palettes. His work demonstrates that you don’t need to go crazy with color and saturation to get great images.

Hamni Juni

A Malaysian travel photographer, Hamni Juni’s work is mainly taken in South East Asia. Rather than focus on the locations, Juni takes pictures of people. I love seeing how similar yet different people all around the world are.

Ali Al-Zaidi

Another travel photographer, Ali Al-Zaidi hails from Kuwait. His work mainly explores the people of the Middle East, India, and Africa. He puts a human face to areas of the world many people only know from news reports.

Dean Bradshaw

Dean Bradshaw is an advertising photographer based out of LA. His work uses a lot of cinematic style lighting. Many of his images look more like an amazing still from a Hollywood movie rather than a photo.

Paul Rojas

The West Coast of the US has some of the most amazing scenery to photograph and Paul Rojas does jus that. His work explores everything from the Californian Coast to the Grand Canyon.

Kurt Budliger

The East Coast, however, is not without its beauty as Kurt Budliger shows. Based in Vermont, Budliger’s work has been published in major magazines like Outside. Some of his best images are captured around his home state.

Adam Gibbs [No Longer Available]

Further North, Adam Gibbs explores the wilderness around British Columbia, Canada. He originally started out as a gardening photographer but his love for the outdoors naturally led him to create stunning landscape images.

Antony Spencer

Antony Spencer’s images border on fine art. His landscapes capture texture rather than place. They show the beautiful patterns that appear when nature is left to her own devices.

Alex Mody

If you love polar bears you’ll love Alex Mody. A nature photographer, he’s spent huge amounts of time exploring the Arctic capturing images of the sadly endangered species.

Ian Plant

Ian Plant likes to blend the real and the surreal. He uses long exposures and a lot of patience to create landscape images that appear like something from a dream. While it might be easier for him to cheat and just use Photoshop, he does all his work in the field.

Harry Guinness

As well as being an exceptional writer, I’m also a gifted photographer. I might be the only person who’d include myself in a list of great photographers to follow but, since I’m the one writing this article, I get to. If you’ve liked any of my work on MakeUseOf, you can check out some more of my personal work on my 500px account.

Are you on 500px? Who are your favorite photographers to follow? Let us know in the comments.