A member of the University of British Columbia Class of '51 in Mechanical Engineering, Harry Palmer began his career as an engineer. In the late 1970s, his career interests began to shift from engineering to documentary photography. By the early 1990s, Palmer had photographed people and places across Canada and into France, Belgium and Holland. Palmer's documentary photographs have been exhibited internationally, and in 1992, his portrait work of the Companions of the Order of Canada was the subject of a book, 125 Portraits. After moving into creative digital photography, Palmer donated most of his conventional photographs to the National Archives of Canada in 1988. After that, he began to create images using 3-D computer software and printing with a sophisticated digital printer ("Giclée "). To mark the 50th anniversary of his graduation from UBC, Palmer donated a set of original, signed Giclée prints to the Faculty of Applied Science.