There, Beal spent his last school years at St Bede's College, Mentone where he started taking photographs, some of which, of a study tour through Victoria, were published as a double spread in The Catholic Weekly.
The scoop led to employment as a 'C Grade' photographer on Adelaide's The News, for which he covered fires, visiting American celebrities Johnnie Ray and Nat King Cole, rodeos, cloud seeding, crime stories, weddings and accidents using the supplied ¼-plate Speed, or Century, Graphic camera.
After losing his job with The News he hitchhiked to Sydney, shooting a story on drug use by long-distance truck drivers on the way,[2] and there began freelancing as a photographer for magazines including Pix,[3][4] Woman's Day,[5][6][7] and for TV Week.
During travel in Indonesia funded by The Sydney Morning Herald he was granted an audience with President Sukarno, to whom he presented a gift of a painting by Australian indigenous artist Winnie Bamara, whom he had photographed in South Australia.
From 1963 Beal freelanced, his photographs appearing regularly in magazines[9] including Walkabout,[10] When he learned that his future wife Dawn intended to travel to the United Kingdom he resigned from the Herald group, and bought a Land Rover with his brother to drive north from Adelaide.
He arrived in London a month or so later via New York and Washington DC with a couple of assignments in hand, one for LIFE magazine which hired him to photograph baseball and the British challenger in the America's Cup in the Isle of Wight.
[11] Later that year he spent 18 months in the US and Europe during which he covered Churchill's funeral for Paris Match and provided the illustrations for Men of Auschwitz, a story written by his wife Dawn on war crimes trials for The Sunday Times, London, returning to Australia in 1965.
In 1968 Kodak (Australasia) supported the National Gallery of Victoria, which was then in the process of setting up a photography department, to buy photographs by Beal along with those of other photojournalists David Moore, Helmut Gritscher and Lance Nelson.
"[40] Amongst other personalities Beal photographed were Dick Bently, June Dally, Lorraine Crapp, Dickie Valentine, Rudy Komon, Diana Ward, Russell Drysdale, John Kerr, John Olsen, Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski, Reg Grundy, Col Joye, Diana Trask, Bruce Petty, Kym Bonython, Marian Henderson, Poncie Ponce, Marlon Brando, David Fanshawe, Les Tanner, Peter Powditch, Len French, Sydney Ball, Robert Grieve, Tony Coleing, Sir William Dobell OBE, Winnie Bamara, Jon Molvig, John Brack, Sir Hans Heysen OBE, Gary Shead, David Aspden, Clifton Pugh, and dress designers Norma Tullo and Hall Ludlow.