I’ve been on Instagram long enough to remember when it was genuinely good for photography.
Not in a nostalgic, “things were better” way — though they were, in some respects. More in the sense that the platform once felt like a real discovery engine. You could find photographers whose work changed how you saw things, follow a thread of visual influence from one account to another, and come away with a clearer sense of what you were trying to do with a camera.
That’s harder now. The algorithm has largely decided that photography should be entertaining first and visually interesting second. Reels outperform stills. Personality outperforms craft. The feed rewards consistency of posting over consistency of vision.
Despite all of that, there are accounts worth following. These are my personal favorites: the photographers and visual storytellers I keep returning to, for different reasons. Some are enormous accounts, some are smaller. All of them have taught me something, either about photography or about how to build a creative practice in public.
Peter McKinnon — @petermckinnon
The most well-known name on this list and the one most likely to divide opinion. McKinnon is as much a brand as a photographer at this point. His feed is cinematic, polished, and carefully constructed around a creator lifestyle aesthetic. (Although he’s lately been vocal about letting go of the perfect feed and just posting.)
I follow him anyway, for a specific reason: he is genuinely excellent at communicating enthusiasm for the craft, and enthusiasm is underrated as a teaching tool. Watch how he talks about light, about gear, about a shot he’s proud of: there’s a specificity and a warmth there that most photographers with his audience have lost. Whether or not his photography is what inspires you, his approach to building a creative practice in public is worth studying.
You can also find his old tutorial videos on YouTube.
Hannes Becker — @hannes_becker
Landscape and adventure photography from rural Germany and beyond. Becker emphasizes composition and lighting in everything he makes, aiming not just to document his travels but to incorporate personal interpretation into each image.
What keeps me coming back: the consistency of vision. His feed has a recognizable look that hasn’t chased trends: moody, northern European, deeply compositional. In an era of algorithmic pressure to constantly shift formats and styles, there’s something instructive about a photographer who has built 2 million followers by doing one thing with increasing precision.
Daniel Ernst — @daniel_ernst
Travel and landscape photography from someone constantly on the road. Ernst’s Instagram feed is a collage of some of the most amazing places in the world. But what distinguishes his work from other travel photographers is the quality of light he chases and the compositional care in each frame. He and Hannes Becker occupy similar aesthetic territory, but Ernst’s work has a slightly warmer, more approachable quality.
Worth following if you care about how landscape photographers think about timing: sunrise, golden hour, and the specific quality of light in specific places.
Benjamin Hardman — @benjaminhardman
A nature photographer based in Iceland, whose work encapsulates the North’s most obscure landscapes: the barren, cold and volatile environments inhabited by glaciers, volcanic mountains and resilient wildlife. He has developed a deep connection with the lands of Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard and Antarctica over the years.
Hardman’s work blends digital media with fixed aesthetic principles through textural contrasts and natural obscurities within the landscape, channeling between portrayals of stark wilderness and refined conceptual pieces, encapsulating the seasonal change that grips Iceland throughout the year.
What makes it worth following: the commitment to place. Hardman didn’t visit Iceland and leave. He moved there permanently, and the depth of his visual relationship with that specific landscape shows in every frame. There’s a lesson in that for any photographer trying to develop a distinct visual identity: know your subject well enough to photograph it across seasons, moods, and years.
Monaris — @monaris_
A distinct creative style focused on composition and color theory, transforming brief instances of reality into movie-like scenes. Monaris built her photography career starting on an iPhone and Instagram, which is either inspiring or beside the point depending on how you feel about gear. The work speaks for itself regardless.
What I find useful about her feed: the way she thinks about color as structure. Not color grading as post-processing, but color as a compositional element from the moment of capture. That’s a distinction worth understanding.
Marc Adamus — @marcadamus
Landscape photography at a technical and artistic level that’s difficult to overstate. Adamus shoots in conditions most photographers wouldn’t attempt: extreme weather, remote locations, light that exists for minutes or seconds. His images look almost unreal because the situations that produce them are genuinely rare.
Worth following not because the work is imitable -it mostly isn’t- but because it recalibrates your sense of what’s possible. Useful to return to when your own work feels too comfortable.
Max Rive — @maxrivephotography
Similar territory to Adamus: landscape photography in extreme conditions, extraordinary light, technical mastery. Where Adamus tends toward drama and scale, Rive’s work often has a quieter, more compositionally refined quality.
The comparison between these two accounts is itself instructive. Same genre, same dedication to difficult conditions, noticeably different visual sensibility. Following both teaches you something about how personal vision operates within a shared subject matter.
Hello Emilie — @helloemilie
Australian creative focused on visual stories and mindful photography: photo, video, travel. Ristevski’s work sits at the intersection of landscape, travel, and self-portraiture. Her aesthetic is softer and more atmospheric than the landscape photographers above; less about dramatic conditions, more about a particular quality of stillness and light.
What’s worth studying in her work: how she integrates the human figure into landscape in a way that adds emotional resonance without making the image about the person. It’s a harder thing to do well than it looks.
Luke Stackpoole — @withluke
A photographer and filmmaker with a passion for emotive storytelling through imagery, travelling the world in search of unique environments to shoot. He has worked with Adobe, American Express, Aston Martin, Sony, and The North Face; a client list that reflects what consistent visual identity can build over time.
What makes it worth following: having worked with leading global brands and reached over a million followers, he’s managed to preserve an authenticity and down-to-earth approach that many photographers with his audience lose. The work is cinematic and carefully crafted without feeling cold. His editing tutorials and Lightroom presets are also genuinely useful if you’re developing your own color language.
Sean Tucker — @seantuck
Photographer, filmmaker, and one of the most thoughtful voices on the philosophical side of creative practice. Tucker’s work is excellent, but his writing and videos about why we make images -the internal life of a photographer- are what distinguish him from most accounts on this list.
Follow him if you want your thinking about photography challenged as much as your vision. He’s the account most likely to change how you approach the work, not just the images.
One More — My Account
I post about photography, visual storytelling, and the creative life at [@mediabyhamed]: the craft, the gear, the process of building a creative practice across languages and countries. If any of the accounts above resonated with why you pick up a camera, it might be worth a follow.
A Note on What’s Missing
This isn’t a comprehensive list of the best photography accounts to follow on Instagram. It’s skewed toward landscape and adventure photography, which reflects what I’ve personally found most instructive over the years. It is not a comprehensive survey of Instagram photography. There are extraordinary street photographers, documentary photographers, and portrait photographers on the platform. Finding them requires more work than it used to, but they’re there.
If you want more, you can also see:
The Best Portrait Photographers to Follow on Instagram
The Best Art and Photography Newsletters I’m Currently Reading
