Thirty Years of Trading for Sutton Images



March 1 2010 saw Sutton Images celebrate thirty years of trading. Since its humble beginnings when a sole photographer shot at local circuits in England, the company has grown to become one of the most respected and best known motorsport photographic agencies in the world.

When Keith Sutton began his trade as a Keith Sutton Motorsport Photographic in 1980, he was setting out on fulfilling a lifelong ambition to shoot Formula One, a desire in no small part inspired by a meeting with his hero Jackie Stewart at Oulton Park in 1963. In early 1981 at a Formula Ford meeting at Brands Hatch, Keith was to meet with another driver who would become a true legend of the sport and undoubtedly helped Keith to make his name in the trade.

Ayrton Senna won his first single seater race that day and a friendship and working relationship between Keith and Ayrton grew from there. Keith took photographs, wrote his press releases, and handled his PR work for three years. In those years Keith also covered a wealth of other motorsport events and an increasing number of Formula One Grands Prix. By 1985, Keith's work volume had grown to a point where he needed assistance and so, with his brother Mark Sutton, formed Sutton Photographic.

Keith covered every round of the Formula One World Championship in 1986; his company has been at every Grand Prix since then. Mark would cover other high profile events such as Le Mans and the World Sportscar Championship; F3000 and many British Championships. In 1990 Mark joined Keith on the F1 circus and has covered hundreds of Grands Prix in those twenty years.

The company based in Towcester, near Silverstone, held an impressive portfolio of clients and from 1988 began taking on staff photographers to help meet the growing volume of work. Some of the most talented young photographers in the field have since passed through Sutton's doors; in many cases Keith Sutton offered them their first real opportunity to shoot motorsport professionally.

In 1995 Keith and Mark's company became Sutton Motorsport Images. The process of digitally scanning and transmitting shots electronically was being pioneered by the firm at the time. A year later, the company website www.sutton-images.com was born and clients could, for the first time, view images taken from a Grand Prix hours after the film had been processed.

On April 1 2000 Sutton Motorsport Images purchased the David Phipps archive, which gave the company coverage of Formula One and other formulae back to 1960. Tens of thousands of scans from the four million colour slide and black and white negative images stored in the library have been added to the company's online archive. With the advancement of digital technology, Sutton Images now shoots all of its images digitally and its online archive, available for anyone to view, contains over 630,000 images.

In 2010 the company changed its name to Sutton Images, but continues to offer its clients the same award winning photography and services that saw it win a prestigious MIA (Motorsport Industry Association) award in 2003. On the eve of the Bahrain GP, the company now looks forward to its fourth decade of covering motorsport at the highest level.