The repression against insurgents that followed forced the Ostrorógs eventually to seek asylum abroad, and they may have temporarily joined the Great Emigration to France.

Eventually he found his way into the 5th Sultan's Cossacks—a Polish cavalry division—and became adjutant to the exiled General Władysław Zamoyski fighting alongside the British and Ottoman armies.

There is a suggestion in Nadar's mémoire that Ostroróg began taking photographs during his time in the Crimean War, and he is said to have taken a Daguerreotype of Adam Mickiewicz on his deathbed in Istanbul in 1855.

His partner in the project, Szumlański, lost all his investment and the patent was sold on to Chappell & Co. [4] That same year, he married the seventeen-year-old Teodozja Waleria Gwozdecka, from a landed Lithuanian family, with whom he had three surviving sons, the eldest of whom, born in 1863, was later to follow in his father's photographic footsteps.

[5] As a nine-year-old boy in Paris, Ostroróg is said to have met the distinguished physicist, astronomer and politician, François Arago (1786-1853), of the French Academie des Sciences who not only fired up his interest in optics and the new possibilities of photography, but whose request to the French government had resulted in its purchase of the discoveries of Jacques Daguerre (1787-1851) and Joseph Niepce (1765-1833) for public benefit and donated them to the "Grande Nation", thereby opening the technology to the wider world.

In the illustrated monthly photographic review, "Paris-Photographie", its founder-editor, Nadar, described Ostroróg senior thus: A clever personality, an energetic, indefatigable business man, perpetually in motion, and most of all, appreciated for his cordiality and kindness.

In 1864, adopting the sobriquet, "Walery" from his wife's name, "Waleria", Ostroróg set up his first photographic studio in Marseilles, on the boulevard du Musée, that lasted till around 1870.

There his career prospered, branching out into portraits of stars of the Folies Bergère, especially of Josephine Baker (some of which, by today's standards, may be adjudged as racist or exploitative) and Mata Hari.

These include the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, London, Getty Images, and private collections.

In 2005, the National Portrait Gallery, London, mounted an exhibition entitled "Victorian Women", featuring the work of Walery, father and son.