 Amongst his expeditions, always undertaken with a camera in hand, were trips to the coast in the north-east of England, where he developed a technique for photographing gannets that involved abseiling down cliffs with the rope attached to a stake that was driven into the ground at the top of the cliff.Beetham at this time used a cumbersome and heavy Sanderson half-plate field camera.Beetham started rock climbing in the English Lake District, although his re-ascents of the sea-cliffs on the north-east coast, once he had captured images of birds on photographic plates, involved much use of the hands.