Abstract: With the development of social media, tourists’ photography has greatly influenced the shaping and dissemination of the image of tourist destinations. The photographic images directly reflect the tourists’ perception of the image of the tourist destination and provide a valuable perspective for place making of the historic and cultural districts. Taking the Dongguan historical and cultural district (hereafter Dongguan District) in Yangzhou City as an example, this paper studies tourists’ perception of the Dongguan District from three aspects of cognitive image, emotional image and overall image, based on simulation shooting method, image analysis method and in-depth interview method. On this basis, we propose the suggestion of place making of the Dongguan District, and point out that we should strengthen the characteristic symbols of the tourism destination, integrate the fragmented symbols, organically merge together natural landscape and humanistic characteristics and strengthen the space organization, thus effectively building destination symbol space, improving the perception of the tourist destination image and promoting the construction of Dongguan District and sustainable development of tourism.