Photo and video for hotels and destinations, focusing on how a place feels

A good hotel is a quiet kind of teamwork. So much care goes into the details, all so a guest can step inside, let their shoulders drop, and feel like they've slipped away somewhere. That's what I want to hold onto.

So many properties have beautiful spaces and good people behind them — they just need someone to see it clearly and tell that story well.

Before this, I spent about a decade in corporate marketing and learning design, with a lot of video work along the way, so I think about your goals as much as the images. I picked up a camera during the pandemic, shot my first hotel almost by chance in Colombia, and haven't stopped since.

The travel work is the part I can't let go of. I've come to believe the real feeling of a country lives in its smaller moments — a detail you'd usually pass by — far more than in its postcards. When a single frame makes someone pause, or wonder, or quietly want to go see it for themselves, that's the whole thing for me.

A few years ago in Buenos Aires, my partner and I had just finished a shoot. We looked up and saw a thin crescent moon, almost smiling. That was the night we decided to keep doing this — and where the name “Nyx” comes from.

— Sarthak Panda, Founder