Tommy Corey is an LGBTQ+ Mexican-American author and photographed based in Central Oregon.

He grew up in Redding, California, where he first picked up his dad’s Olympus OM-1 at the age of twelve. That camera became his passport into a new way of seeing the world. He’d spend hours in his neighborhood park or his grandmother’s barn, turning them into makeshift studios for his childhood friends and his little sister, Emily. Portraits became his way of understanding people — and himself.

At twenty-two, Tommy created The Self-Worth Project, a photo series that invited people to share their insecurities and how they’ve learned to overcome them. The project was born out of heartbreak — a string of teen suicides in his hometown — and his own memories of being bullied for being different. It became an early glimpse into what would define all his future work: empathy, courage, and the radical act of being seen.

In 2018, Tommy hiked the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. Along the way, he photographed his fellow hikers as if they were models in a high-fashion editorial. He called the project Hiker Trash Vogue — a playful name for something deeply meaningful. The series went viral and marked the start of his career as not just a photographer, but a storyteller capturing the ways people find identity, humor, and belonging in wild places.

After the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, Tommy turned to filmmaking. His first short film featured his friend Alexis Martin, a Black woman from Washington who finds peace and purpose in nature. The film reached over 100,000 viewers and caught the attention of public figures like Sophia Bush. Over the next two years, he produced twelve more short films spotlighting people whose connections to nature defy stereotypes — 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.

In 2022, while hiking the Continental Divide Trail, Tommy felt a quiet pull to return to something deeper — a sense of community and shared humanity. That feeling inspired his first book, All Humans Outside, published May 1, 2025, by Mountaineers Books. The collection features portraits and stories of 101 individuals from across the United States, each exploring how people find belonging and healing through nature.

Over more than two decades behind the lens, Tommy’s work has carried one consistent message: we all belong — to each other, and to the world around us.