Tourism

Destination Food & Travel Photography

Tom's tourism photography is built around a simple idea: the best way to make someone want to visit a destination is to show them what it tastes like. His travel and tourism work centers on the food, wine, and hospitality culture that defines a place: the restaurants worth flying for, the wine regions worth driving to, the hotel dining rooms that make a trip memorable. His work for Air New Zealand's Pacific Coast Highway campaign and the Santa Lucia Highlands wine region are both built on that idea. More and more, that pull starts on a phone: in Simon-Kucher's 2026 Global Travel Trends survey of more than 10,000 travelers, over 55% of Gen Z and Millennials said social content guides where they go, far more than older generations who tend to return to familiar destinations. Peer-reviewed research on destination photography backs this up: images shot in a natural setting with professional technique score far higher on making someone want to visit than amateur or built-environment shots, and visual appeal is consistently the single strongest driver of that response (Deng et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2021).

Tourism Board & Travel Brand Photography

Tourism boards, airlines, and destination marketing organizations need photos that can win a spot in a travel magazine and still work on social and in print. Tom's editorial work has run in Vanity Fair, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal, and he shoots tourism to that same standard. His experience working on multi-day, multi-location travel campaigns means he can cover the full scope of a destination, from a morning at a farmers market to dinner at a beachside resort, in a single, coordinated production. For boards and wine AVA groups managing imagery across many member properties, he coordinates a shared asset library built for the whole region rather than a patchwork of separate local shoots.

Cruise Line & Vessel Photography

Tom has photographed aboard vessels for Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean, covering the full scope of the onboard experience: dining programs across multiple restaurants, hospitality and service, interiors, and the ship itself at sea. Cruise line photography is a specific discipline that combines the demands of hospitality and food photography with the logistics of a live, moving environment. Inaugural sailings and vessel launches require a photographer who can work efficiently across a large ship on a compressed schedule, producing a complete library across dining, lifestyle, and architectural subjects in a single production. The resulting imagery needs to perform across advertising, editorial, social, and the line's own marketing channels for years to come.

Looking for a destination and tourism photographer in a specific market? See the city travel pages for Los Angeles and Las Vegas, or the resort and tourism page for property and destination work in more depth.

UGC & Social-Ready Destination Content

A destination campaign now has to work as hard on a phone screen as it does in a magazine spread. Tom builds a set of social and UGC-style images into every tourism production, shot alongside the polished campaign photography, so a tourism board or resort walks away with imagery that performs across a media kit, a press placement, and a Reels feed, drawing on the same approach behind building an influencer-style image library for a hotel or destination.

Multi-Day, Multi-Partner Campaign Production

Tourism boards and destination marketing organizations rarely need one property covered; they need a region, a route, or a season told across many partners at once. Tom plans and runs multi-day productions that move between hotels, restaurants, and attractions across a single trip, delivering one coordinated library instead of a set of images shot by different photographers on different schedules, similar to the airline route work behind the Air New Zealand Pacific Coast Highway campaign.

Common Questions

How many days does a destination campaign shoot usually take?

It depends on how much of the destination the campaign needs to cover, but most multi-location tourism shoots run three to seven days to reach several properties, restaurants, and experiences in one trip. Tom builds the schedule around the destination's geography so travel time doesn't eat into shoot days.

Can tourism photography double as content for social and influencer-style posts?

Yes. Tom shoots destination campaigns with an eye toward how the images will actually be used on social, not just in print or on a website, so a single production can supply polished campaign imagery alongside a set of images that read naturally in a feed.

Does a tourism board need to book photography separately for each partner property?

No. Tom coordinates campaigns that cover a tourism board's partner hotels, restaurants, and attractions in one production, so the destination has a single, consistent photo library rather than a patchwork of images shot by different photographers at different times.