Moved to California in early 1870s, working first in mining then buying a fruit farm in the 1890s; when this failed in 1900, he took up as a free-lance photographer; reported on the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905) and afterwards continued to travel around Asia, photographing Burma, Korea, Java, China, India and Japan; elected Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society (FRGS); most famous as photographer and cinematographer for Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to the Ross Sea and South Pole (1910-1913).