In 2020, Tommy expanded that work into filmmaking. His first short film featured his friend Alexis Martin, a Black woman from Washington whose relationship with nature offered a story often missing from outdoor media. The film reached more than 100,000 viewers. Over the next two years, he produced twelve more short films, featuring people including industrial designer and disability advocate Kam Redlawsk, Triple Crowner and Army veteran Gabriel Vasquez, and plus-size athlete and whitewater raft guide Ash Manning.
While hiking the Continental Divide Trail in 2022, Tommy began imagining a larger collection of these stories. That idea became All Humans Outside, his first published book, released by Mountaineers Books in 2025. Through portraits and stories of 101 people across the United States, the book explores the many ways people find identity, community, and belonging in nature.
After returning to Redding, Tommy founded Bloomline Collective, his first online publication. Bloomline tells stories about community, culture, artists, the outdoors, and the people shaping the places they call home. Through photography, reporting, and conversations, the publication invites readers to get to know people whose lives may look different from their own—and discover where their experiences meet.
Across 25 years of taking photographs, Tommy has kept coming back to people: who they are, what they carry, and what becomes possible when someone takes the time to listen.
Tommy Corey is an LGBTQ+ Mexican-American author and photographer based in Redding, California.
Tommy Corey is a photographer, author, journalist, and founder of Bloomline Collective. He lives in Redding, California, having returned to his hometown in March.
At twelve, Tommy picked up his dad’s Olympus OM-1 and began photographing the people around him. His neighborhood park and his grandmother’s barn became makeshift studios for childhood friends and his little sister, Emily. Portraiture gave him a way to get curious about people—and to better understand himself.
At twenty-two, he created The Self-Worth Project, a portrait series that invited people to share their insecurities and how they were learning to overcome them. Inspired by his own experiences with bullying and the loss of young people in his community to suicide, the project opened conversations about vulnerability, acceptance, and what it means to feel seen.
In 2018, Tommy thru-hiked the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. Along the way, he photographed fellow hikers as if they were models in a fashion editorial, using whatever the trail offered as a backdrop. He called the series Hiker Trash Vogue. The project went viral, bringing a wider audience to his playful portraits and the people finding friendship, humor, and belonging on trail.
