Goodbye 2019. 2020, do your best!

Another weird and wonderful but incredible year took place at McAteer Photo, and we want to say a massive big thank you to all our equally weird and wonderful clients and associates. You are the best!

With around 300 shoots under our belt, we were a tad busy – precisely the way we like it. And, as tradition demands, we’re looking back on some memorable projects to highlight the variety of commissions that have come our way.

Our first commission of 2019 was an architectural photography shoot of a fabulous new flexible workspace just outside Glasgow city: Red Tree Magenta in Rutherglen when we got to play with our new medium format camera kit, the Fujifilm GFX50R.

South Lanarkshire College invited us back for another year to document all manner of goings-on in both still and film photography. Commissions included video interviews with ex-staff and college graduates to showcase at the annual staff conference, an event which we also filmed and photographed. We created a series of videos for their staff recruitment drive, filmed and photographed students in the construction department and documented many events, including Nae Paseran, Men’s Mental Health Awareness Day and SLC’s graduation ceremonies. The SLC staff and students were, as always, incredibly welcoming and open. We’re already looking forward to some January shoots with the students, who are always up for a selfie!

Invest Glasgow commissioned us to produce a film to showcase the many developments happening along the Clyde waterfront to show at March’s MIPIM property market conference in Cannes. Along with our Eye in the Sky associates, we filmed a series of locations along the river and combined them with CGI footage and visual masterplans to create a smashing film that shows the reinvigoration of Glasgow’s waterfront with investment equating to £2.5bn. Later in the year, we partnered again with Invest Glasgow to produce a film that talks of the build-to-rent investment the city is attracting.

Long term client, Scottish Enterprise had our freelance associates and us photographing all over Scotland at supported businesses, cross-sector events, press launches and entrepreneurial development fund initiatives along with aerial flights to photograph development and investment sites around Scotland. We continue to manage the Scottish Enterprise online image library, cataloguing our images and sourcing from 3rd parties.

For Graham Construction and Laurence Macintosh, we photographed the beautifully refurbished University of Edinburgh Law Library at the start of the year. And, in February, we were asked to shoot St Valentine’s remains (yes, really), and Alan got to photograph the maker of his favourite beer, Dougal Sharp of Innis & Gunn. Both shoots were for Scotland is Now.

We turned 17 in February, celebrating with copious amounts of doughnuts and team haikus!

During Spring, we photographed many murals, stained glass and artworks in Glasgow churches for Church of Scotland as well as some great shapes in the newly refurbished Murchison House at the University of Edinburgh’s King’s Building Campus for Knauf AMF.

We love doing portrait photography commissions, particularly with young people who have a never-ending enthusiasm for life and we got to do just that when filmed and photographed apprentices at DSM for Message Matters.

Living in the west of Scotland, the weather can be somewhat challenging, especially when it’s ‘dreich,’ so we jumped at the chance to photograph a beautifully renovated Quercy farmhouse in France’s Lot et Garonne region during the glorious summer months.

The National Trust for Scotland invited us to illustrate their policy document front covers. Working with the Trust’s Head of Collections and Interiors, we created a series of people-centred pictures featuring NTS treasures.  You can see more photos from this shoot here.

We photographed two significant campaigns for Arran Sense of Scotland during 2019: product photography for their signature scent, After the Rain (which you can read more about here) and their Christmas offering throughout their product range. We sourced props, styled and photographed the pieces in our Glasgow studio, resulting in creative imagery that Arran has widely used on social and digital media channels.

Glasgow School of Art events are always a source of inspiration and offer some great photo opportunities. We were there for many of their highlights, including the MFA Graduate event at Citizen M, where we captured many-a-nice portrait and the Undergraduate Fashion Show, which included a collection by Melody Uyanga Ramsay – the winner of a prestigious internship with Ralph Lauren (find out more here). The Graduate Degree Show is always a favourite to photograph too.

The 2018 fire at Glasgow School of Art was one of the saddest incidents in recent times. GSA asked us to photograph what remained of the iconic structure after the building was made safe for some to enter in late spring.

Pulp paper manufacturers, Cullen asked us to help with their re-branding and create a collection of new images that showed their people, products and processes.  You can read more about that commission here.

We spent a day with medical trial software developers, Formedix to observe their team at work. We were fuelled by their incredible enthusiasm for their work and their team of fun-loving staff.

We created a series of short films for Scotland’s Towns Partnership featuring interviews with small business owners to highlight the business improvement districts for Scotland’s smaller rural towns.

We had office-envy after photographing Threesixty Architecture’s amazing new workspace at The Garment Factory in Glasgow. We created a photo series of observational, candid images of the staff in their new home-from-home.

Throughout the year we’ve travelled around Scotland for architectural photography shoots and ended 2019 with a couple of nice shoots at CoVault shared offices in Tradeston and the refurbished offices of The Bible Society in Edinburgh.

And lastly, we were commissioned by Get Made who are collaborating with the National Trust for Scotland to experiment with enhancing visitor experiences. Haddo House was the venue for the study of Light, Dark, Heat and Cold which we photographed before and during the event to provide a record of this new approach.

We can’t tell you how privileged we feel to be invited into businesses and locations just to do what we do: commercial and architectural photography. We meet some great people, we work with some real visionaries and we enjoy every minute of it. So, thank you again for your business, your support and friendship.