This photograph represents the closest Fenton came to the besieged city of Sevastopol. The camera looks towards the harbour and the Black Sea beyond, from the British ‘Mortar Battery’, a point on the Vorontsov Ridge. The Great Redan, Russia’s defensive bastion on the edge of the city and the focus of the allies’ offensives during the summer of 1855, is to the left. Barker used this photograph to create the topographical detail in the background of his painting.