Served in the 7th Madras Cavalry 1858. A prolific amateur photographer from the early 1860’s. Hooper was seconded from military duties from October 1861 to June 1862 to take a series of ethnographical photographs in the central provinces, a number of which later appeared in the People of India (8 vols, London 1868 – 1875). In about 1872 he produced for sale in collaboration with George Western a series of views illustrating tiger hunting and in 1876-1878 photographed victims of the Madras famine. As Provost-Marshall with the Burma expeditionary force of 1885 -1886
he made a record of the campaign, published as an album entitled Burmah: a series of one hundred photographs and also as lantern slides. After the campaign he was officially censored for attempting to photograph a military execution at Mandalay.