Born in Kyoto, Tomooka would often visit bamboo groves with his father, a bamboo basket maker, from an early age. He loved art from an early age and was drawn to the "two-dimensional, realistic world of painting, where it was hard to tell if it was a painting or a photograph." He copied Raphael and Da Vinci, and in Kyoto he saw many Japanese paintings, ink paintings, and Buddhist statues.
He worked at a flower shop when he was in high school, and worked as a gardener in landscaping temple gardens during his university days. Realistic painting and plants. Tomooka, who loved these two worlds, encountered photography in the design department at university.
He currently grows his own flowers in Tokyo and takes "picturesque photographs," which are contemporary Japanese paintings taken with a digital camera, and are akin to today's Rinpa.