Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah's interest in photography started in the 1920s, honing his camera skills under the tutelage of a Japanese expatriate in Kuala Terengganu. Most active between the 1940s-1960s, Sultan Ismail took various photographs of landscape, portraits, and scenes in rural Terengganu. The photographs he took are typically his observations of his habitus, in a social documentary style. He was the first Malayan photographer to receive his Associate of the Royal Photographic Society (ARPS) of Great Britain in 1958. In 1959, he founded a Camera Club in Terengganu. He was also the Royal Patron of the Photographic Society of Malaysia when the society was established in 1956. For his services to the early modern photography scene in Malaya, he was made an honourable member of the Photographic Society of Singapore (PSS).
