Sometime before 1880 they moved to Baltimore city so that Edward would be closer to his literary colleagues and for access to formal education for the children.

With the death of her parents in the early 1880s, care of the Spencer family was left to a woman named Eliza "Mammy" Benson.

Emily transformed an upstairs bathroom of her home into a dark room, where she did all of her own developing and printing, working with a large format camera.

[citation needed] In the December 1921 issue of Photo-Era Magazine (Volume 47, Number 6, pp.291–93), she published an article, "My First Photograph", which discusses the first image she made of an infant.

During the early twentieth century, she participated in numerous photographic competitions held by photography journals, as well as having many of her prints included in regional exhibitions.