In 1854, he was commissioned to document events occurring in Crimea, where he became one of a small group of photographers to produce images of the final stages of the Crimean War.

[note 1] In 1840 Fenton graduated with a "first class" Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of London,[2] having read English, mathematics, Greek and Latin.

In Yorkshire in 1843 Fenton married Grace Elizabeth Maynard, presumably after his first sojourn in Paris (his passport was issued in 1842), where he may briefly have studied painting in the studio of Paul Delaroche.

He visited Paris to learn the waxed paper calotype process, most likely from Gustave Le Gray, who had modified the methods employed by William Henry Fox Talbot, its inventor.

These were unpaid commissions, but Fenton was allowed to sell the prints on his own account, eventually setting up a shop at the museum entrance.

As well as formal studio portraits, he made informal tableaux vivants of the queen at Balmoral, Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace.

[8][9] The resulting photographs may have been intended to offset the general unpopularity of the war among the British people, and to counteract the occasionally critical reporting of correspondent William Howard Russell of The Times.

Fenton's photograph does not show the actual site of the charge, which took place in a long, broad valley several miles to the south-east.

[14][15][16] He remains uncertain about why balls were moved onto the road in the second picture: perhaps, he notes, Fenton deliberately placed them there to enhance the image.

In June 1855 illustrator and war correspondent William Simpson produced a watercolour of the Woronzoff Road, with a view downhill.

[18][19] Despite undergoing summer high temperatures, breaking several ribs in a fall, suffering from cholera (the effects of which contributed to his early death[3]) and becoming depressed at the carnage he witnessed at Sevastopol, in all Fenton managed to make more than 350 usable large-format negatives.

Despite the lack of commercial success for his Crimean photographs, Fenton later travelled widely over Britain to record landscapes and still life images.

It is likely that Fenton, from a wealthy background, disdained 'trade' photographers, but he still wanted to profit from the art by taking exclusive images and selling them at good prices.

In 1858 Fenton made studio genre studies based on romantically imaginative ideas of Muslim life, such as Seated Odalisque, using friends and models who were not always convincing in their roles.

Ann (d.1855) and Anthony (d.1861); they are buried on the west side of Highgate Cemetery in a plot adjoining the grave of Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal.

Fenton moved with his remaining family from Albert Terrace, Regent's Park to Potters Bar, Middlesex, perhaps for healthier air.

[citation needed] In 2005, 90 of Fenton's images were included in a special exhibition devoted to this "most important nineteenth-century photographer" at the Tate Britain gallery, London.