David Octavius Hill worked closely with Robert Adamson and together, as Hill and Adamson, they were the most sought after portrait photographers of the mid 1800s. At a time when photography was still struggling to find an identity as both a method of documentation and an artistic practice, Hill firmly insisted that photography was an art. His work had a notable impact on photographic practice because of his avant-garde understanding of the medium and he would later inspire and influence photographer Alfred Stieglitz.