Ian Burton: Career highlight

Fear is something he lives with every working day. It's what gives his job its savour and he says pressure makes him perform better. "Stepping off the edge is exciting. People say don't look down. But the reason to go up is to look down."

His livelihood depends on risk taking and we are able to judge how extreme in a new television series. It's about famous buildings and fitting them into the context of the best of British engineering and architecture. Not a topic that is inherently risky – unless the method is to scrutinise an exterior by climbing up it then sliding down a rope to the ground.

This action man approach to an academic subject is why a top adventure cameraman familiar with urban climbing techniques was required to get the spectacular shots. At St Paul's Cathedral they had 45 minutes to accomplish the whole ascent from pavement to top of the dome – and then make a single abseil down the floor of the nave. "We had to be out by eight and we hit the ground at one minute to," says Ian.

Once the 15 buildings had been identified and permission granted, the shoots were tightly scheduled. "Each one is like an original climb and you treat it like a cliff face," says Ian. "Blenheim Palace was falling apart. On St Pancras the dirt was incredible, even though the renovation was only completed in 2006." It meant getting to places other climbers cannot reach, such as inching up the face of Jesus in the immense Graham Sutherland tapestry at the altar of Coventry Cathedral. For a 32-year-old man whose professional life is spent up in the air, Ian is remarkably down-to-earth. There's no bravado, the degree of risk he is prepared to accept carefully calibrated. "Extreme is a category with a sliding scale. Some things I do are extreme but the viewers will think it's more dangerous than it is."

He started climbing when he was in the Scouts when he had a parallel interest in nature photography. Watching David Attenborough films inspired him and with no leaning towards the academic, he took a video production course at Dewsbury College. Stumbling on someone who needed help at Leeds University film school, Ian spent much of his college time there. Starting out in work as a lowly field assistant with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds film unit in the North of Scotland, he ended up shooting a film about sea eagles. "I then had five years of decent work with BBC Scotland where I learnt how to shoot on a low budget with a fast turn-around."

He has worked on Countryfile and on the first Springwatch for the BBC and won several awards. One of them was for a drama feature shot in Pakistan.

What got him his first secure career foothold? "A foothold? I don't think I've got one even now. I filmed the episode on Ben Nevis with Griff Rhys Jones in his BBC series Mountains and I thought, 'There, now I've made it'. But it doesn't work like that. Older colleagues say exactly the same thing. It's a very competitive business. Most of the work seems to go to the same five guys."

He lives in a former mill worker's cottage in Luddenden, a quirky corner tucked away in the Calder Valley on the road from Halifax to Hebden Bridge. Most of Ian's family live in this area, his grandparents have a smallholding up the road. "My character is freelance and living here is my reward. Sometimes you have to pay for it – the recession hit me quite badly. I was at home for two years almost." He knows he would be better placed for work if he lived in London, or Bristol, the home of the BBC's Natural History Unit. But Yorkshire is where he likes to come back to.

A large photo in pride of place across his fireplace is his atmospheric shot of Mount Asgard on Baffin Island in the Arctic. He took it last year when work had dried up and he went north to help fulfil another man's dream.

Leo Houlding's ambition was to make a film about climbing Mount Asgard and then throwing himself off and gliding to the ground in a special suit. Houlding is the man whose other claim to fame is that he once raced Jeremy Clarkson up a mountain in the Alps, one climbing the direct route, other racing a car round the hairpin bends. It's still one of the most chosen YouTube videos from Top Gear.

On the day we met, Ian had just learnt that the Discovery Channel had bought their film. Arctic wing-suit gliding sounds extreme and it is. It comes under the heading of base jumping, where the limits are constantly being pushed. Close-proximity wing-suiting is the new thing. Instead of leaping out as far as you can and gliding to earth, the idea now to is to turn back to the top of the precipice and drag your fingers down it as you descend. It conjures up a picture of Road Runner in a serious scrape in a Loony Tunes cartoon.

"In base jumping they reckon you have to accept that half your friends will die. That's not a scenario I want to get into." But a certain amount of fatalism is always needed every time Ian clocks in for work. "There's no Plan B, you are fully committed and at that point there's no point in worrying. If it's going to fail there's nothing you can do about it." At the Liver Building in Liverpool he made his way across a rope more slender than your little finger strung between the two towers.

"This is a massive traverse, there's a lot of rope out. I weigh 80 kilogrammes – so say 100 kilogrammes all told with the gear. That is putting one-and-a-half tonnes of pressure on the anchor on either side. There's lot of physics in this and you say to yourself, 'You could hang a Land Rover from this, so get over it'. One of the riggers said more people are hurt in toaster-related accidents (by inserting knives to winkle out the bread) than in climbing. But there is an emotional aspect. You can be doing it for so long and you don't have a problem and then one morning your brain doesn't want to handle it. Next day you are back on form."

Something like this happened as he prepared to make the 312ft drop – probably close to the maximum for one abseil – inside the atrium at the Lloyds of London building.

"The abseil was logically okay. Coming down from the oculus at St Paul's Cathedral was even more exposed and I didn't have an issue there." So what do you do at that point, hanging in the air?

"Fortunately, I can rationalise things. I had a quiet word with myself and talked my way through the procedure. I find it calming to get behind the viewfinder. It took me 10 minutes to calm down."

Lucy Creamer from Sheffield, seven times British climbing champion, is the main climber in the series which is presented by cultural historian Dr Jonathan Foyle. It puts in the spotlight on Lincoln and Durham cathedrals, Glasgow School of Art, Caernafon Castle, Blenheim Palace, New College Oxford and Burghley House among others. Ian hopes this job will mark the end of the recession for him. "I didn't chase this job, they came to me." The blowy weather had temporarily disrupted his schedule. All being well, he would be scaling the final building, the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, the following day. Fame is the spur, but fear perhaps in equal measure.

Climbing Great Buildings, BBC2 week nights at 6.30pm for three weeks from next Monday, September 6.

YP MAG 4/9/10