Roger Fenton’s decision to leave his law career to work with photography—then a newly developed medium—might have had to do with his correspondence with photographers Gustave le Gray and Henri Le Secq. Fenton, who was trained in painting, quickly became a nationally acclaimed photographer and came to be a founding member of the Photographic Society in London. He gained fame with his 1852 series of the first photographs of Russia and the Kremlin, and his 1855 photographs of the Crimean War were also the first large-scale photographic documents of war. Fenton’s other subjects included landscapes, architectural studies, still lifes, and genre scenes; he was once commissioned to photograph the British royal family. In 1862, Fenton became disenchanted with photography’s market and he returned to his law practice.