Glasgow, 1846, the second city of the British Empire is expanding rapidly and Ellory McHale, a working class woman receives an unexpected bequest which allows her to leave her job as junior assistant to a famous male photographer in Edinburgh to set up Glasgow's first professional photography studio, in a glass-roofed top floor within sight of the Clyde.

There, Ellory crosses paths with wealthy heiress Annis Buchanan, and the two strike up a friendship based on a mutual understanding of what it means to be a woman trying to carve out her own path in a man's world. While Annis must fend off the advances of her cousin Forbes, who is determined to inherit the Buchanan fortune by hook or by crook, Ellory ventures into the dark underbelly of the city, using Glasgow's most famous performers as models in early erotic photography.

But in a city where reputations can be destroyed at the drop of a hat, can both Annis and Ellory build lives on their own terms - especially when dark secrets are brought to light?