As we near the release of the official 500px iPad app, here's a nice little third-party surprise to tide you over. The Pulpfingers team released an app today based on the 500px API called ISO 500.

We're thrilled by its slick design and functionality and we encourage you to give it a whirl on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. It's available on the App Store now and best of all, it's free!

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Guess what? 500px is going to New York City!

That fact alone is exciting, but we're kicking the excitement factor up a notch with a booth at this year's PDN PhotoPlus International Conference and Expo. PhotoPlus is the largest industry event for photographers and image-makers, with more than 115 educational seminars and hands-on labs will be available for those wishing to expand their skill sets. It's going to be a whole lot of fun.

As always, we encourage you to bring your friends and come meet us in person to chat or ask any questions about the site.

What: PDN PhotoPlus International Conference and Expo

When: October 27-29, 2011

Where: Booth 883 in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Centre, New York City

If you register online by Oct. 25, your ticket will be free. After that date, a basic Expo pass will cost $50 for regular attendees and $25 for students.

For more information, visit the official site for the event.

Want to connect with us before the show? Add us to your circles on Google+ and feel free to throw any questions or comments our way:

Evgeny Tchebotarev

Oleg Gutsol

Andrey Tochilin

Jen Tse

We hope to see you there!

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Every day we see stunning photos from our peers in the 500px community, but not often do we turn the lens back upon the photographer. The Portrait series focuses on remarkable 500px users who may have something to teach us about their field of photography. This week's feature is Dean Bradshaw.

Tell us a little about yourself, Dean.

I'm a photographer and digital ninja based in Southern California by way of arguably the most isolated city in the world: Perth, Western Australia. Before taking up photography full-time and moving out to the U.S., I was a full-time biologist, catching snakes and lizards in the Australian Outback. Talk about a career change. I create dramatic images for brands—whether that be a person, corporation or cause. I suppose what makes my work different to others is my lighting and post-production techniques. I love what I do and am inspired by the world around me!

How did you get into commercial photography?

I had always doodled and sketched throughout school—moving into oil painting in high school. I didn't have the attention span for the hyper-realistic paintings that took me months to complete, so when I unwrapped a small digital point-and- shoot for my 18th birthday—a gift from my parents—I was hooked. Having grown up building websites and playing in Photoshop, I took to digital quickly.

I began by photographing wildlife and remote places on zoological field trips and gradually realized that photographing people was my main interest. I have a great passion for travel and so as I got into travel photography, I was picked up by the Wideangle agency as one of their photographers. I travelled to Africa, Eastern Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia shooting assignments and personal work. I have plans at the moment to get back into that rhythm.

Back home, I joined a studio run by Perth’s most successful advertising and commercial photographers and further refined my lighting and business skills. Eventually, based on my portfolio and vision for lighting and retouching, I had an opportunity to move to the United States to work as a retoucher in a commercial photography studio. I took it, without ever having been to the U.S. or knowing what I was in for. I sat in Photoshop building elaborate composites and hyper-real imagery for about a year until I realized that I wanted to work for myself and create the images that I wanted to create. I’ve been out on my own for about a year now and it has been an incredible journey…

Your style is very dramatic. Can you describe some of the technical aspects of achieving that look for your photos?

My style is based on dramatic lighting to sculpt a scene, build atmosphere and draw the viewer’s eye. I work in a very pre-visualized way—coming up with a concept/image in my mind and then assembling all the parts I need to make it happen. Every image is a different recipe and as such requires different ingredients in terms of lighting, models, location, props and post production. That said, I do leave room for spontaneity as sometimes that makes for the best pictures.

Concept is also a big part of your work and style. How do you come up with your ideas?

I sit on a mountaintop and I chant ommm. Haha actually no—that’s probably the most challenging part of making images—coming up with visually compelling ideas. I try to spend most of my time musing about concepts rather than about equipment and the other more obvious aspects of being a photographer. Most of the time ideas come to me after a prolonged buildup in my mind. I then sit with them for a while and the ones which stay with me are the ones that tend to happen. Usually my mind is swimming with ideas for shoots or single images and ultimately it comes down to making them happen—a much slower process than coming up with ideas in the first place.

Which photographers or artists inspire you the most?

Cinematography is probably the most inspiring visual art form to me. The way that filmmakers use light, build depth and use props is something that I’m always paying attention to. Currently, some of my favorite photographers would have to be Erwin Olaf, Art Strieber and Sebastiao Salgado.

What gear do you shoot with? What is your typical setup like, if you have one?

I usually shoot with a Canon 5D Mark II. It is light and easy to work with. On commercial jobs I sometimes use the Phase One Medium Format system. It has spectacular image quality but is slower and more cumbersome. I also use a number of lights, always dictated by the scene. Anywhere from 1-8 lights is what I tend to use. I like to shoot with prime lenses where it is practical—I prefer their sharpness and quality, but also how they make me think more about composition.

Marketing yourself must be a significant challenge. How do you find publications and brands to work for?

Mostly through word-of-mouth and the web. I find the best way to market myself is to focus on making better and better imagery. Sooner or later someone will see it. I’m also a very social person in real life and on the web. That makes a big difference: I’m always out meeting with people, some of whom may hire me sooner or later. Ideally I like to be in a place where my imagery is so unique that perhaps I’m only competing with a handful of photographers with similar styles. There is so much amazing talent out there—being personable and conveying a unique vision is the most important thing.

What are some of your favourite parts of your work? Your least favourite?

I really enjoy creating: everything from arriving on a set and setting up lights to polishing the images in Photoshop. I think one of my favorite moments though is setting up lighting and getting it to the point where I can look at my images on the back of the camera or capture computer and be really happy with what we’ve created. Beyond that, seeing my images in print, on billboards and in magazines is a great feeling.

My least favorite part of commercial photography is the business aspect. I’d much rather be creating than running a business. In saying that – I feel very lucky to be able to do what I love.

What advice do you have for photographers who might want to get into commercial photography and sell their images?

Make better images! Always be improving your craft. Be different. As Seth Godin puts it, be remarkable. Once you've done that, show as many people as possible and never give up!

For more of Dean's photography, check out his 500px page, Google+, and his website.

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The new 500px iPad app is currently in beta testing and we can't wait to release it to the world. You may have already caught a brief glimpse of the app on Twitter, but as our superstar developers iron out the final kinks, we thought we'd let you in on a few Instagram screenshots from the beta version.

Ladies and gentlemen, drumroll please...



A look at the new app's vertical photo display (see lead photo for horizontal display). It's as if that iPad screen were made for viewing photos on 500px. Or was 500px made for the iPad?


Carry your photography portfolio anywhere and create an impressive slideshow presentation that viewers will never forget. Share your photos at the touch of a button. Enter the app in style with a home screen photo that's always changing (the current home screen shown is in beta).



We're in love with browsing photos on our iPads using the app's elegant and intuitive thumbnail mode.

It's only getting better and there's more on the way. Be excited!

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This tiny screenshot from Google Analytics might be one of the most exciting announcements we have for you this week. We've hit not one, not two, but three new milestones at 500px, and we couldn't be more thrilled.

Yes, you're reading those numbers right—the last month brought us 6,000,000 hits, 3,000,000 unique visitors, and 50,000,000 pageviews. Wowza!

We have both the loyal, talented users who've kept our community buzzing and a flood of enthusiastic new users to thank for helping us reach these mind-boggling numbers. It's tough to get a sense of how quickly and on how large a scale everything is happening from our headquarters (we are but 12 people sharing 10 desks and some beanbags, after all). To think that outside our cramped office space, there are millions of image lovers from around the world helping us build the photography community of our dreams!

With every new month, we've celebrated, and we can't wait to see the numbers come November. Thank you all.

We've also received some love from the press for the news of our triple-whammy milestone. Check out articles about us on Launch and on Techvibes.

I did say that this was one of the most exciting announcements we had to share this week. What could be next? I wonder if it could possibly have something to do with iPads...

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