Son of a baron, Colonel Henry Stuart Wortley spent part of his youth as a page of honor to Queen Victoria. He entered military service at age sixteen, served in the Crimean War, and took up photography in 1853 while a Cape Mounted Rifleman. He did not exhibit his photographs, however, until after he retired as a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1862. Wortley was a member of the Photographic Society of London
