Tees Valley Commercial Photography in Hartlepool, Darlington, Stockton, Middlesbrough & Redcar

A recent commercial photography job saw me photographing across all of the Tees Valley, for my client Local Enterprise Partnership Tees Valley Unlimited. 

Tees Valley Unlimited works to deliver jobs and economic growth across the Tees Valley, an area of 304 square miles, which is located between North Yorkshire and County Durham, stretching from the mouth of the River Tees through to Darlington.

This was a wide-ranging photography project that needed a lot of planning to structure a large number of shoots in different locations, and each with a different focus. I spent hours putting together a comprehensive plan to detail not just the type of commercial photos I would take, but how I would carry out this complex project, and I believe this was one of the factors in my winning the work.

My first job was to sit down with the LEP team to talk about the Tees Valley commercial photography project, and what they wanted to achieve from it. This was a useful stage - getting to know the client and their objectives is the most important part of a job and happens long before I pick up a camera.

My brief covered key areas across Tees Valley and nine specific topics ranging from photographing wind turbines in the North Sea and trains to people and places, all designed to promote Tees Valley as a great place to work, live and do business.

I also needed to factor in both landscape and portrait shots, plus some with the space for designers to overlay text if needed. The images will be used across the LEP’s new website, its marketing literature and could feature on large format outdoor spaces such as buses and billboards or used as canvas prints in meeting rooms, so the photo library had to be extremely versatile.  

Wide ranging projects like this that include a lot of outdoor photographs are governed by changeable weather, and I did a lot of early mornings and late nights.  At one point I photographed Middlesbough from Eston Nab in the dark and I can tell you I’ve never come down a hill so quickly.

The pace was fast and I remember one Sunday shoot that started at 4am and finished at 4pm and as I rounded off the day by taking photos of people enjoying themselves on Seaburn beach I was pretty much exhausted.

Every day was different and I covered a 100's of miles. I might start off with an early morning photography shot at Hartlepool, then move on to photograph apprentices at a chemical plant at Wilton in Billingham before calling at Darlington Railway Station to photograph business people getting on and off trains, and finish by photographing aircraftshots at Durham Tees Valley airport near Darlington.

One of my favourite leisure shots from this job was one of a mature chap simply standing looking at the beautiful Saltburn coastline. A perfect lifestyle shot, this reminded me what a little gem the Tees Valley is, and I realised I was not alone in thinking this when I tweeted from my Twitter account @charnleyphoto  that ‘Teesside is not full of smog’ and it got 34 retweets.

I love being a North East photographer. We are blessed in this region with beautiful coastline and countryside, presenting a fantastic commercial photography chance to showcase Teesside towns such as Darlington, Middlesbrough, Stockton, Hartlepool and Redcar, plus traditional villages like Norton, Yarm, BIllingham and Eaglescliffe.

It’s an incredibly beautiful part of the world, I’ve lived here for 18 years and I still keep on discovering areas I’ve never seen. The great thing about being a professional photographer is being able to help people see familiar sights with a fresh eye, and I hope my work has achieved that aim for Tees Valley Unlimited.