It is likely that Maynard learned the skill of photography from his wife, and his earliest known photograph is an 1864 panorama of Victoria. In 1868, he took his first long distance trip, up the
Cariboo Road to the gold mining town of
Barkerville, accompanied by his eleven-year-son Albert, nicknamed "The General", who kept the miners entertained with magic tricks and acrobatics. Two years later, Maynard returned alone to his hometown of Bude, and on the way back he stopped to purchase photographic supplies in New York City. In May and June 1873, he received a government commission aboard the gun boat
HMS Boxer which journeyed first to
New Westminster, then up the east coast of
Vancouver Island, continuing past along the mainland as far north as
Bella Coola. On the voyage was the first federal
Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the province of British Columbia,
Israel Wood Powell, and Maynard's role was to document native affairs for the official report. His photographs included the first views of free-standing totem poles among the
Kwakwaka'wakw at
Klinaklini River, and in
Takush Harbour, he took six field portraits of villagers seated against the backdrop of a
Hudson's Bay Company blanket. The next year, Maynard was again the photographer on a similar mission with the same vessel, this time on a circumnavigation of Vancouver Island. The photographic results were disappointing due to the incessant bad weather, although his most important images were taken at
Yuquot on
Nootka Sound. , 1880s, on a
sociable. In 1875, Richard and Hannah travelled to San Francisco to buy photographic equipment. While Richard was engaged with
landscape photography, his wife managed a thriving studio business in Victoria. In June 1879, Richard made a brief trip to
Alaska, photographing local sites in
Wrangell such as
Chief Shake's house, and also making a stop in
Sitka. Two months later, Richard and Hannah went on a pleasure cruise around Vancouver Island, composing a number of views together. It is not always clear judging by the imprint which of the Maynards took any given photograph, even though some historians consider the outdoor images to be Richard's and the studio work to be Hannah's. In 1880 or 1881, Richard won a government contract to photograph the construction of the
Canadian Pacific Railway between
Port Moody and
Eagle Pass in British Columbia. Hannah and her husband visited
Emory Creek and
Yale in 1880, and Richard subsequently made further trips along the railway route in the next five years. He returned to Alaska in 1882, sailing on the steamer
Dakota, again photographing Wrangell and Sitka, and at the latter place he took views from
Baranof's Castle. In
Taku Inlet, Maynard set up his camera on an ice floe but had to be rescued by a small boat when the floe started to break up. On another government commission in 1884, Maynard accompanied the American explorer Captain Newton Chittenden on an expedition to
Haida Gwaii, then called the
Queen Charlotte Islands. He took about 200 pictures on this trip, and most of the images are of villages,
totem poles, and canoes, but notable exceptions were the interior of two
Haida houses, the earliest such photographs known. In addition, he documented the
eulachon fishery at the mouth of the
Nass River on the adjacent mainland. Some engravings based on his photographs were published in Chittenden's report, released in November 1884. On July 4, 1886, he photographed the first passenger train to reach the
Pacific coast at
Port Moody. In April 1887, he took views of
Vancouver, which had almost been totally destroyed by fire the previous year. During the following two months, Richard and Hannah toured the newly opened railway line as far as
Banff and
Canmore, Alberta. A third solo trip to Alaska occurred in July 1887, and despite being ill for much of the voyage, he managed a handful of photographs at Sitka,
Glacier Bay, and Wrangell. Richard and his wife took a cruise in 1888 on the steamer
Princess Louise to Haida Gwaii, photographing a number of localities there as well as on the British Columbia mainland and Vancouver Island. In 1890, Maynard won first prize in the professional category for his local photograph of Victoria Arm, in a contest sponsored by the
West Shore, a
Portland, Oregon magazine. He made a two-month trip in 1892 to
Saint Paul Island, part of the disputed
Pribilof Islands group in the
Bering Sea, to record the seal rookeries. Maynard took about 200 photographs, and several of them made their way into the official report of the
international tribunal convened to resolve ownership of the islands. In 1893, he made his last excursion to the
Kootenay and
Arrow Lakes region of British Columbia. ==Final years and aftermath==