Charles George Hood Kinnear was born in 1830 at Kinloch House, near Collessie, Fife, into a wealthy banking family. In 1849 he was articled to Edinburgh architects William Burn and David Bryce. It is suggested in the Dictionary of Scottish Architects that he may have learnt photography from Bryce, although his known body of work indicates that his photographic experiments pre-date their known professional association.
Kinnear became a founding member of the Photographic Society of Scotland in 1856, and in the same year entered into partnership with Edinburgh architect John Dick Peddie. In 1857 he went on an architectural and photographic tour of northern France using a new form of camera with conical bellows, which provided the model for nearly all subsequent cameras.
Kinnear’s final public exhibition of photographs was in 1864, after which his architectural work absorbed most of his efforts; the firm of Peddie & Kinnear had become hugely successful, securing major commissions for private houses, public buildings and churches throughout Scotland which remain major landmarks to this day, including Edinburgh's Cockburn Street, and the hydropathics at Dunblane, Craiglockhart and Callander.