[2] Valentine studied photography at the University of St Andrews where he became an acquaintance of Thomas Rodger, who probably photographed him around 1850.

In 1860, he decided to emulate the success of George Washington Wilson in Aberdeen by selling topographical view photographs.

His organisational and presentational skills were essential in the rapidly expanding and thriving concern which opened a large printing works at 152 and 154 Perth Road, Dundee.

Valentine views in the nineteenth century aimed at the national middle and upper class tourist market, with the production of both drawing room albums containing selections of photographs arranged geographically and individual landscape prints.

Subjects concentrated on tourist sights in Scotland, then to England in 1882 and on to fashionable resorts abroad, including Norway, Jamaica, Tangiers, Morocco, Madeira and New Zealand before 1900.

The enlargements show numerous defects, especially tapered bolt holes on the critical connections holding the tie bars and struts to the cast iron columns.