Ponting was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire in the south of England, on 21 March 1870.
His father was a successful banker, Francis Ponting, and his mother was Mary Sydenham.
 From the age of eighteen Herbert was employed at a local bank branch in Liverpool, where he stayed for four years.
 That time was long enough to convince him that he did not wish to follow in the profession of his father, and attracted to stories of the American West, he moved to California where he worked in mining and then bought a fruit ranch in the 1890s.
 In 1895 he married a California woman, Mary Biddle Elliott; their daughter Mildred, was born in Auburn, California in January 1897.

Ponting sold his fruit farm in 1898 and, with his wife and daughter, returned to Britain to stay with his family.
When they returned to the USA he turned his long-standing hobby of photography into his next career.
Following a chance meeting with a professional photographer in California, to whom he had given advice about the locality and showed his own photos, he entered his pictures in competitions and won awards; he also sent some of his stereoscopic photographs to companies who published them.
His work was also selected for the first San Francisco Salon; at that time he was living in Sausalito, north of San Francisco.
 He took stereoviews of and reported on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05, and afterwards continued to travel around Asia, working in Burma, Korea, Java, China and India taking stereoviews and working as a freelance photographer for English-speaking periodicals.
Improvements in the printing press had made it possible, for the first time, for mass-market magazines to print and publish photographic illustrations.

After spending much of 1901-6 travelling around photographing in Asia, Ponting returned to Europe, where he continued to take stereoviews (including in Switzerland and Spain) and wrote illustrated articles for magazines including Country Life, the Graphic, the Illustrated London News, Pearson's, and the Strand Magazine.
 In the Strand, Ponting's work appeared side by side with the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, one of Ponting's contemporaries.

Ponting expanded his photographs of Japan into a 1910 book, In Lotus-land Japan.
 He took extensive photographs in Spain.
 He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).
 His flair for journalism and ability to shape his photographic illustrations into a narrative led to his being signed as expedition photographer aboard the Terra Nova, the first time a professional photographer was included on an Antarctic expedition.
Ponting was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire in the south of England, on 21 March 1870. His father was a successful banker, Francis Ponting, and his mother was Mary Sydenham.  From the age of eighteen Herbert was employed at a local bank branch in Liverpool, where he stayed for four years.  That time was long enough to convince him that he did not wish to follow in the profession of his father, and attracted to stories of the American West, he moved to California where he worked in mining and then bought a fruit ranch in the 1890s.  In 1895 he married a California woman, Mary Biddle Elliott; their daughter Mildred, was born in Auburn, California in January 1897.
Ponting sold his fruit farm in 1898 and, with his wife and daughter, returned to Britain to stay with his family. When they returned to the USA he turned his long-standing hobby of photography into his next career. Following a chance meeting with a professional photographer in California, to whom he had given advice about the locality and showed his own photos, he entered his pictures in competitions and won awards; he also sent some of his stereoscopic photographs to companies who published them. His work was also selected for the first San Francisco Salon; at that time he was living in Sausalito, north of San Francisco.  He took stereoviews of and reported on the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05, and afterwards continued to travel around Asia, working in Burma, Korea, Java, China and India taking stereoviews and working as a freelance photographer for English-speaking periodicals. Improvements in the printing press had made it possible, for the first time, for mass-market magazines to print and publish photographic illustrations.
After spending much of 1901-6 travelling around photographing in Asia, Ponting returned to Europe, where he continued to take stereoviews (including in Switzerland and Spain) and wrote illustrated articles for magazines including Country Life, the Graphic, the Illustrated London News, Pearson's, and the Strand Magazine.  In the Strand, Ponting's work appeared side by side with the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, one of Ponting's contemporaries.
Ponting expanded his photographs of Japan into a 1910 book, In Lotus-land Japan.  He took extensive photographs in Spain.  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).  His flair for journalism and ability to shape his photographic illustrations into a narrative led to his being signed as expedition photographer aboard the Terra Nova, the first time a professional photographer was included on an Antarctic expedition.
Herbert Ponting