Hospitality · Bangalore
A hotel doesn't sell a room. It sells the ten seconds someone spends imagining themselves in it — and that decision gets made on a phone, on a listing page, weeks before anyone arrives. I shoot properties across Bangalore and Karnataka so that moment lands: rooms and suites, the restaurant at the hour it actually looks best, the pool, the spa, the arrival. Stills and film from the same visit, because booking two crews for one property is money you don't need to spend.
Proof
The Marriott resort in Coorg is the clearest example — a cinematic brand film through the Western Ghats plus seven social-first reels, shot, graded and delivered by me. Hospitality is its own discipline: you're photographing a feeling that has to survive being cropped into a thumbnail.
What a property usually needs
Every category, shot consistently so a guest comparing two room types is comparing the rooms, not the photography.
The restaurant, the bar, the breakfast spread — shot at the hour the room actually looks like that, which is rarely the hour that suits the kitchen.
Pool, spa, gym, lobby, the walk in from the car. The parts people picture before they picture the bed.
For plantation and heritage properties the approach is half the sell — the road, the gate, the first view of the building through the trees.
Karnataka resorts live on the wedding season. Venue sets that show scale honestly get you enquiries the brochure shots never will.
One cinematic piece for the brand site and the trade decks, cut so it still works with the sound off.
Vertical, shot on the same visit rather than salvaged from the film afterwards. It shows when they are salvaged.
Correctly proportioned, honestly lit sets for the booking platforms, where most of the decision actually happens.
Bangalore
Karnataka gives you three different properties in one state — city business hotels around MG Road and Whitefield, the plantation resorts up in Coorg and Chikmagalur, and the heritage places further out. They photograph nothing alike. A city hotel lives or dies on its rooms and its breakfast; a plantation resort sells the drive in and the mist at six in the morning, which means being there at six in the morning.
Questions
Yes, and it is usually the whole reason to book me rather than two suppliers. The lighting setup for a suite is most of the work; shooting motion from the same setup costs hours, not days, and everything matches afterwards because it came from one camera and one grade.
It depends on room categories more than on size. A city hotel with four room types, a restaurant and a pool is usually a full day plus an early start. A resort with villas spread over acres is two to three, because you are chasing the same hour of light across a lot of ground.
Yes. You get full usage for your own marketing — brand site, OTA listings, trade decks, print, paid social, in perpetuity. I do not licence hospitality work by the year or by the channel; you paid for the shoot, the pictures are yours.
Always, and it is easier when I get them early. Group properties usually arrive with a photography standard from head office covering angles, styling and grade. Send it before the recce and the shot list gets built against it, rather than reshot afterwards.
One all-in number per property, quoted after a short call about categories, dates and where the images need to run. It covers the shoot, the edit and the grade — no per-image fees and no separate licensing line later.
Usually, yes — that is a normal hospitality job. If the original set is mine I have the grade and the camera notes. If it is not, send me the existing images and I will match the look closely enough that a guest scrolling the gallery cannot tell which floor was shot when.
Constantly — the Marriott campaign was shot in Coorg. Anywhere in Karnataka is a drive, and travel for a multi-day resort shoot is built into the one number rather than added afterwards. Chikmagalur, Hampi, Mysore and the coast are all normal.
That depends on which version you are selling. Post-monsoon, roughly October to February, gives you the green without the grey, and it is when most of Karnataka photographs best. But if your guests come for the rain — and in the plantations plenty do — then shooting in it is the honest answer, and it makes far better film than stills.
Room categories, the dates you are thinking about, and where the images need to run. I’ll come back with one all-in number covering the shoot, the edit and the grade.