Matthew Beatman

At the beginning of our 3rd year, Mathew Beatman from Monocle magazine came to give us a guest lecture about his work and what it’s like to work within a magazine.

He went to university in Staffordshire and studied a degree in photography shooting mainly in film and even still shoots in film today. His images are very rarely retouched and he uses ambient light in almost all of his images bar the still life ones. He started off by working in wallpaper magazine after doing a 3 month internship there. He remained working there for 6 years before moving into an agency for another 3. After this he then moved into monocle magazine where he still resides.

He says that a lot of people who work for the magazine still shoot in film like him, and also that a lot of other photographers in the industry still use film. A lot of the ambient lighting rules carry on to the other photographers that work within the magazine so as to maintain an image and certain standard of photography.

Over the years of working at monocle he has made a reputation of himself as a highly professional photographer. He has also become the Director of photography within the magazine. This job entails him and his team of editors discussing what they want in the next magazine issue, how the want it shot and what light that they want to images to be taken in. From this they then can contact different photographers to fit in with the different jobs letting them accuire the best images from the best photographers that they can find. This results always in high quality images that compliment the text. After they have gathered the images, he meets up with designers who help to choose the perfect images for the issues. They usually have between 30 and 40 different photo-shoots per issue.

They create mood boards before starting any work on magazines, these help in the decision process of what is going to be included in the magazine and is also a much more creative outlook on how things are going to work together. They then include paintings and different art forms to create an ideal image and the direction that they want to go down.

The photos that are taken make up for about 90% of theur total image count, the other 10% are bought. This is to back up their standard of retaining their voive and hacing complete control over the images, but also allows them to stay open to experimentation.

He states that the magazine is always looking for new photographers and a fresh image to keep the magazine feeling new and not becoming repetitive and old. They search for new people via blogs, exhibitions, contact by email and festivals. The main festival that they contact new photographers at is UNSEEN festival that takes place in Amsterdam.

Monocle magazine along with other magazines opens up the door for big brands to advertise. Monocle is very specific in the advertising that they include and also how much they include in their magazines as too much advertising can put people off and with too little it then borders on the lines of becoming a photo book rather than a magazine.