How the man behind Albion pictures fell into a worldwide business
WHEN Richard Burley is not taking action pictures for Burton Albion, the remarkably varied photographic and video work he does for his company, Epic Action Imagery, takes him to all corners of the globe – to Asia, the Middle East and North America, as well as all over Europe.
His speciality has become action adventure racing – you may have heard of Tough Mudder and Spartan Race.
These are worldwide concerns and Richard has become the go-to man to capture the action.
The results are an array of spectacular pictures of people testing themselves to the limit and you might think a cold afternoon at the Pirelli Stadium is a little mundane by comparison.
That’s not how Richard, who is from Burton, sees it. He radiates enthusiasm for all of his work and, probably, that is because he recognises the stroke of fortune which put him on this path in the first place.
Already a keen photographer, he had been working as a college teacher and progressed to management but he started his own business on the side in 2010 and when, in 2014, the chance arose to take voluntary redundancy, he jumped at it.
But things really changed on a family trip to Cambridge when the rest of the family wanted a Mcdonald’s and he chose the arguably healthier option of a Subway.
“If I hadn’t done that, that day, I wouldn’t have passed a billboard on the way to the Subway store,” he says.
“I was shooting the occasional sporting event, making a little bit of money but still employed full-time with the college.
“On this billboard was a picture of someone jumping over burning straw bales and I thought ‘that looks like fun, why don’t I see if they’ve got a photographer?’
“I think I’ve benefited from an enormous amount of luck. This was a billboard for Spartan Race. They’d just started – one event in the US, no events anywhere else, this was their first event in the UK. And they said ‘you know, we hadn’t thought about course photography, of course you can come!’
“That first moment at a Spartan Race really told me what it was going to be like.
“I was set up along the course, waiting for people to come from the right and suddenly they appeared to my left like velociraptors.
“That said to me, don’t ever expect everything. You know that thing where you like things to be predictable? You’re going to have to part with that.”
Another moment along the early part of his journey will resonate with
anyone who has set up their own business and taken a punt on expensive equipment.
“I just wasn’t getting the shots I wanted, because I was convinced I didn’t have the right lens,” says Richard.
“So I went to the camera shop, just to look at a new lens and, 30 seconds later, I walked out with the box.
“I had to tell my wife I’d spent the money we’d saved for a sofa on a camera lens and she said: ‘Well you’re going to have to take that lens and make that money again.’ Which I took very literally!”
Luckily – or perhaps because he was very good at what he does – the Spartan work was soon plentiful.
“Soon, Spartan were asking me to shoot their international events,” he says. “Then other events started asking me to shoot and suddenly I was doing this full time and building teams of photographers. I’d call it an accidental business, really. An experiment that got entirely out of hand.
“I think I was fairly lucky, again, because I was an educator and a manager in my full-time work before. I was used to recruitment, I was used to building teams, passing on information, delegating and allowing people to grow. Everything I did was very developmental.
“The whole purpose of education is to help people grow to become better than yourself – and not be intimidated by that, which is a great fit for photography.
“It’s really something I look for while building a team of photographers: work that makes me stop and go ‘whoa, I’ve got to know how you got that.’”
He enjoys the challenge of capturing movement, facial expressions, the people he meets along the way – and simply being outdoors. It can be bitingly cold at an English football match and, occasionally, witheringly hot. But, by now, it is nothing he has not experienced to greater extremes elsewhere.
“I’ve worked in 42 degree heat in Bahrain and I’ve worked in -20 cold in Canada. Thighdeep snow, I’ve been swatting flies off, days where it feels like someone’s hitting me with a firehose but I love that. I love being outdoors. To reframe that: I don’t think there’s a challenge apart from loving what you do, really.”
Epic Action Imagery is growing and expanding quite naturally. Video is becoming an increasingly important part of Richard’s work now. Brand and promotional imagery work has followed. Since the company launched in 2010, they have captured action in 18 countries, including more than 120 Spartan Events, a figure now being chased by Tough Mudder races since they came on board in 2014. They cover standard road races such as 10ks and half-marathons, too.
Epic have covered more than 500 professional football fixtures; Richard is in touch with more than 500 freelance photographers and videographers and have also had an office in Canada since 2018.
It is quite a success story and, largely, a quiet one – Richard could not be described as a boastful man but he is understandably proud of what he has achieved in a relatively short space of time.
Today, though, it will be back to basics again – the man on the touchline, capturing the key moments in the Brewers’ latest match.