Composition Magic: Elevate Your Hotel’s Feed With My Pro Photography Techniques

If you’ve ever looked at your Instagram feed and wondered why it just felt lacking, this article is for you. Here, I’ll tell you how hotels can design an Instagram feed that exudes luxury, combining professional photography with strategic layout and curation techniques for maximum impact.

Invest in Professional Photography
The foundation of a luxurious Instagram feed lies in high-quality photography. Investing in professional photography ensures that your images are visually captivating, showcasing your hotel's amenities, accommodations, and surroundings in the best possible light. Professional photographers have the expertise to capture the essence of your hotel, leverage your brand identity and convey a sense of luxury and sophistication through their images.

Photographer tip: You will see this for yourself below, but investing in professional photography also makes your job a hell of a lot easier. Hope you don’t mind my frankness. But, I know just how much hotel marketeers are juggling, and if there’s something that can make your job easier, I think you should really know about it. 

Anyway, I created two feeds to show you side-by-side how to create a cohesive, visually appealing story with your imagery. But as you’ll see, even the ‘bad’ feed doesn’t look half as terrible as some of the hotel feeds I scroll through on a daily basis. But why is that? It’s because the photos are all edited cohesively, composed professionally and show off the very best this hotel has to offer. When you have a mix of high and low-quality visuals with different editing styles, you really start running into problems creating a good-looking feed that tells a story.

Establish a Consistent Visual Identity
Consistency is key to creating a cohesive and aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed. Establishing a consistent visual identity involves choosing a mood and editing style that aligns with your hotel's brand image. Whether it's bright and airy, moody and dramatic, or minimalist and elegant, maintaining a consistent look and feel throughout your feed enhances its overall appeal and reinforces your brand identity. 

Photographer tip: However, you need to be strategic. While you might love a competitor’s feed that is light and airy, if your hotel’s lighting and design don’t create bright and open spaces, you will never be able to achieve this kind of aesthetic, no matter how good the photographer is. 

As a photographer, I also do not recommend creating a feed around a specific color pallet — ie. using all blues or all neutrals. While your hotel might use specific colors as its brand colors or within its interior design, limiting yourself to imagery that only falls within this color aesthetic will severely limit the scenes and experiences you can showcase. I’ll be frank with you once again: guests don’t care about everything that is blue or one single color in your hotel, they want to see photos that they feel illustrate the experience they can have. Period. So instead, I suggest focusing on a mood or feeling you want to convey. This will allow you to show off all aspects of your hotel no matter what room it is in or what season it is outside.

With that being said, you need still need to create a feed that is curated and cohesive, so keep reading for my tips on that. 

A hotel feed that “gets it”

A hotel feed that doesn’t “get it”

Curate Your Content
Curating your content involves selecting and arranging your photos in a way that tells a cohesive story and engages your audience. Consider the overall aesthetic and mood you want to convey and arrange your photos accordingly. Mix and match different types of content, including room shots, amenities, dining experiences, and local attractions, to provide a well-rounded view of what your hotel has to offer.

Photographer tip: For example, take a look at the two feeds I created above. Both feature photography I shot for NOUS Santorini, but one tells a much more visually appealing story. On the left, there are three drink shots in a row, featuring a creative shot of a cocktail, a shot of the bartender and then a shot of the bar you can sit at and experience it all. Below there is the spa with this scene that quite literally looks like you can jump into it. Before it, two shots from nearby Oia. Here you can tell the story that the biggest attraction of the island is nearby, and after, you can take a reprieve at our spa, truly getting to experience the best of the island in one day. In the last row, I’ve put together three twilight shots, all featuring different scenes but in similar lighting. It’s a great way to show off how you can enjoy the property at night, lounging by the fire, the pool or simply in your private garden. 

What’s wrong with the feed on the right? There is no story. We jump between scenes and experiences with no buffer, and the composition and colors of these photos just don’t match.

Create Visual Cohesion
Creating visual cohesion involves ensuring that your photos flow seamlessly from one to the next. Pay attention to factors such as color, composition, and subject matter to create a harmonious visual experience for your audience. You should also use tools like grid planning apps to preview how your photos will look together on your Instagram feed and make adjustments as needed to maintain visual coherence.

Photographer tip: If you look at the feed on the right, you will see that there is just no visual cohesion. The feed on the left tells a clear color story, using the contrast of orange and yellow against blues and greens to flow between different scenes. On the left, it’s jarring to jump from rust to Santorini blue, as well as having warmly lit indoor scenes next to blue-hour evening shots. Individually, there is nothing wrong with these photos. However, the way they are arranged on the right just doesn’t flow, create a story, emote any feeling or, frankly, inspire.

Another tip is to keep in mind the forced perspective of each photo. If every photo is composed the exact same, for example, with the focus of the shot in the exact middle, the feed will feel repetitive and boring. You want to incorporate photos that look at aspects of your hotel from different angles — literally. Working with a photographer is a great way to ensure you get these diverse shots.