Studied chemistry at Anderson's College in Glasgow, 1878-1879; worked in the family’s photography firm; travelled to Vienna in 1883 and was taught the process of photogravure by Karl Klíč; made photogravures from calotypes of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson; c 1891 moved onto portrait photography, photographing Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Ellen Terry and George Bernard Shaw.