I photograph completed buildings for the practices that designed them, and for the developers, contractors and public trusts who paid for them. Most of that work is commercial, industrial and civic: workplaces and retail, production and distribution halls, pools and transport buildings. I trained as a printer rather than as a photographer — four years in a commercial darkroom and then a colour lab — which is where an interest in paper came from, and why the prints I sell are made the way they are. Two years assisting on interiors work taught me what I did not want to make. I have worked under my own name since 2015, from one room above a bookbinder in Glasgow, and I take about thirty commissions a year. Between them there are four projects nobody has ever commissioned, which is where the prints come from.
Exhibitions
| Year | Exhibition |
|---|---|
| 2026 | *Load Bearing*, Kelvinhaugh Print Rooms, Glasgow |
| 2025 | *Under Glass*, Anstruther Botanic Trust, Fife |
| 2025 | *Four Projects*, Northgate Gallery, Leeds (group) |
| 2024 | *Water Table*, Redgorton Arts Centre, Perth |
| 2023 | *The Working Building*, Inverleith Institute, Edinburgh (group) |
| 2023 | *Afterlives*, Marchbank Gallery, Glasgow |
| 2022 | *New Photography North*, Tarbert Contemporary (group) |
| 2021 | *Municipal Fabric*, Pentland Civic Trust, Glasgow |
| 2019 | *First Sequence*, Kelvinhaugh Print Rooms, Glasgow |
Commissions
I am hired to photograph a building once it is finished and, increasingly, once it is occupied. Practices use the pictures for awards submissions, for their own websites and monographs, and for the pitch that wins the next job; developers use them to let and to sell; trusts use them to show funders that a building is being used. The same set of frames has to work for all of those, which is why the edit is sequenced rather than dumped.
I have been very lucky with who has called: Ordish & Fen, Kilmany Architects, Corrigal Studio, Tarbert & Doyle, Harlaw & Vane, Marchbank Developments, Bellhouse Distillers, Strathleven Group, Cassiopeia Line, Pentland Civic Trust, Inverleith Partnership, Northgate Housing, Wemyss Housing Association, Ardrossan & Pike, Fenwick Estates and Redgorton Works.
Representation for advertising work is through Fenwick & Slade.
How it works
A day is £1,450. That covers a pre-shoot walk with the contractor or the building manager, access and permissions including any neighbouring site whose windows fall in frame, a light plan worked out for that building's orientation, the shoot itself, selects within 72 hours and the full sequenced edit of 25–40 frames within ten working days.
If the weather fails the light plan, the day is rebooked at no charge. That is a scheduling problem rather than a photographic one and it should not be billed as though it were yours.
The licence is unlimited and perpetual for the commissioning practice's own use — website, awards, print, social, monographs. Named third parties who were not the client are licensed separately and cheaply. Press use is free. The only thing not granted is resale as stock, or use in training a generative model.
Booking runs six to ten weeks ahead. Occupied buildings need about a fortnight's notice so consent can be arranged properly.
FAQ
Do you photograph buildings that are still on site?
Yes, and it is often the only chance at the structure before it is covered up. I hold a CSCS card, arrive with a method statement, and do the site induction like everybody else. The one thing I ask for is the snagging list in advance, so the things you already know about do not end up being the subject of a frame.
Can we use the pictures for the contractor's website too?
The practice's licence is unlimited and perpetual for its own use, so you never need to ask me again. Other named parties — the contractor, the developer, a product manufacturer — are licensed separately and cheaply, usually as a one-off. Press and award use is free and needs no permission at all.
What happens if the weather is wrong?
I come back, at no charge. Every shoot is planned around which elevations get light at which hour on that particular site, so a grey day is not a day I can improvise around. It is a scheduling failure rather than a photographic one, and charging you for it would be charging you for my own forecast.
Do you photograph interiors with people in them?
Yes, and it is usually the point — an empty building tells a funder or a board nothing. Nobody is ever identifiable: people are at distance, in motion, and turned away, and consent is arranged in advance with the building manager. Nothing is styled in and nothing is styled out.