The Department of Tourism has admitted using pictures of places other than Bermuda in its latest advertising campaign, The Royal Gazette has learned.

Magazine adverts for Bermuda feature a model photographed on a beach in Hawaii, and pictures of a diver and someone swimming with a dolphin which were taken elsewhere.

Local photographer and National Liberal Party (NLP) vice-chairman Graeme Outerbridge slammed the advertising campaign as dishonest.

But Tourism assistant director for marketing Michael DeCouto said stock pictures were used frequently in advertising campaigns, adding they were used by New York agency Arnold McGrath to create an "emotion".

The picture of a model by Anne Menke is in black and white and altered to give her a bikini top. Colour pictures of umbrellas on Elbow Beach were also added.

Another shot shows a diver swimming in what appears to be a school of barracuda. Mr. Outerbridge said that shot, which he thought was from the Seychelles, was particularly misleading because there are no large schools of barracuda around the Island, which divers would expect to find if they saw the picture.

But Mr. DeCouto said it was impossible to tell what kind of fish were in the shot.

The final picture used is a generic image which Mr. Outerbridge says is taken in Florida of someone swimming with a dolphin.

Mr. Outerbridge said local photographers felt insulted that they were not used extensively for the campaign, and they could have done the work carried out by Ms Menke.

He told The Royal Gazette: "Mr. DeCouto said the art director at Arnold Advertising was simply after a feeling. This feeling is a lie and you cannot expect to attract people to Bermuda based on dishonesty.

"Using pictures taken in other travel destinations to promote Bermuda is wrong and unethical. The Tourism Minister (Renee Webb) has excluded Bermudian photographers and invested large sums of the taxpayer's money in a print campaign that is dishonest.

"The picture (of the lady) on a beach is standing on a beach in Hawaii inviting you to visit Bermuda. Maybe soon Hawaii will be using Bermuda beach shots for their ad campaigns.

"Why is the picture in black and white when Bermuda's beaches are so beautiful in colour?"

Mr. DeCouto told The Royal Gazette yesterday: "Three shots in the entire campaign are generic stock pictures.

"It is very expensive to produce a new brand campaign and we were looking for the most efficient way of doing it.

"The images in question, you could never tell where in the world they are, and they are images that portray more a feeling and position for Bermuda in our profile of sophisticated contemporaries.

"They are fashionable images, and one is of a woman in a bikini with a hat on, which is more for emotion, and that image could have been taken anywhere in the world. We felt it was fine to use that image.

"You can't tell what kind of fish that is (in the dive picture). Stock images are used all the time in the industry.

"We were looking for the most efficient way to produce the new brand campaign. I haven't been here for a long time so I can't say for definite, but I am sure stock images have been used in the past (in Bermuda adverts).

"The work of local photographers Ian Macdonald-Smith, James Cooper, Roland Skinner and Scott Stallard, were included in the new campaign and there was a broad cross section of photographic representation of the destination, and to focus on three abstract images is not fair on the campaign as a whole."

Neither Tourism Minister Renee Webb nor Arnold McGrath art director Jeanne Byers returned calls for comment yesterday.