Hotel and Resort
Photography
The hospitality industry has always been faced with a central paradox. It can advertise what a place looks like but can much less easily convey what it feels like to be there.
Everyone has seen photographs of balloons flying over the temples of Bagan in Myanmar but only if you have been there do you know how unreal the silence is.
The resort of Cancun famously has white sandy beaches but only if you go there do you spot the frigate birds high up above the peninsula surfing on the updrafts those beaches produce.
The silence of Kyoto’s Four Seasons Hotel which looks into an ancient Japanese Garden only truly registers as a sanctuary if you have also experienced the bustling city beyond it.
As an internationally acclaimed luxury hotel photographer my role is to not just to record what I can see but to hint at what can’t be seen. It is always a responsibility I relish as I enjoy making photographs that give a sense of how a location feels as well as how it looks.
I photograph luxury hotels and resorts around the world for clients based around the world providing professional hotel photography for leading hospitality brands, for major ownership groups and for some of the world’s leading hotel designers and architects.
Over the last ten years I have photographed important new hotel openings in Asia, Europe and the Middle East (EMEA) and the Americas and I am a brand-approved photographer for many luxury hotel brands including Four Seasons, Fairmont, InterContinental, Taj, Kimpton, Hilton’s Curio Collection and Marriott’s Luxury Collection.
Coming from a architectural background I am also particularly intrigued by the role the hospitality industry serves as an incubator for influential ideas in interior design and it’s influence on luxury residential design, yacht design and cruise ship design. The luxury hotel aesthetic can also be seen very clearly in the luxury residential market.
The greatest number of new hotel openings worldwide have come in China. I have provided China hotel photography for international clients and, as a brand-approved photographer in China for the largest brands such as Hilton, Marriott and IHG I have extensive experience of working in the country.
Hospitality photography crosses photographic disciplines requiring technical skills in hospitality lifestyle photography, food photography, portrait photography as well as hotel interiors and hotel architecture.
I also find myself increasingly providing hotel drone photography, which is fantastic for resorts where otherwise shots would be impossible such as above the bamboo forest at The Chedi, Ninghai. But since, as visitors, we cannot float in the air we still need to make images at eye level that engender enough excitement to encourage a traveler to experience it for themselves.
When I work as a luxury resort photographer I realise that my role differs from that of the luxury hotel photographer as the target markets are different.
Resort photographers are marketing lifestyle experiences as much as holiday locations. What options are there for entertainment? What spa and wellness treatments are available?
Luxury hotel photographers have to illustrate a hotel’s corporate offerings, its meetings and events facilities and the convenience of its location within the city. The luxury resort photographer by contrast may be advertising its away-from-it-all appeal of the kind that hotel photography in the Maldives, Mauritius and the Caribean markets.
To do this I often use a combination of means including video, lifestyle photography and interiors photography.