In the past, we’ve featured artists, raised awareness and supported causes with our Background Gallery. But some of the most striking backgrounds we’ve seen have been photographs.

So, a few weeks ago we reached out to the photographer community on about.me with an idea. We wanted to share their photographs with our users, give them a platform to be featured on and get them exposure to the about.me community.

What you see today is the first group of community sourced photos in the Background Gallery!

The inaugural group of photographers include: Kara Stewart, Jukka Ahola, Habib M’henni, Jason Lau, KT Bosse-Foy, Steven Pam, Jonathan Robson, Elena Ratner, Barry Young, Maria Rafaela, Maureen Jacobs, Marc Garrido Clotet, Isaiah Headen, Sophia Agtarap, Juanjo Alonso, Jesse Almanrode and Kedar Sonigra.

Each image in the Background Gallery links to the photographer’s about.me page, so be sure to click through to learn more about each person. And if you are looking for a photographer, consider these first.

We will be rotating these images out in coming months. If you’d like to have a photo you’ve taken considered as a background, please email an image to aboutphotos@about.me (they should be 1680×1050 px 72 dpi).

Thank you to every photographer who submitted. It was a challenge to narrow the field and we can’t wait to use more images as the year progresses!