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As per this photography article, Henry Talbot had invented the negative technique in 1830s.

French artists also favored the paper negative and its poetic. Around 1850 the painter and experimenter Gustave Le Gray introced the waxed paper negative, which meant that the negative paper could be coated and kept up to 2 weeks before exposure and did not have to be developed for a couple of days after exposure.

Ironically British photographers were more influenced by the advancements made in France after the French calotypes were displayed at the Great exhibition of the works of the industry of all Nations held in the Crystal Palace, London, in 1851.

Although Talbot’s invention came first and was by then widely used, French innovators received more credit for perfecting the technique: André Giroux’s father manufactured Daguerre’s equipment.

LeSecq, son of a politician started to take photographs to make preparatory sketches for its paintings and then became one of the five a photographic preservers of France most significant architectural buildings.

Negre, started off as “genre photographer”, which nowadays refers to “street photographer”, as he was concerned less with crumbling monuments and more with the rich atmosphere of living places, incorporating villagers in his hundreds of trials.

My only master is the light of day: I have only to look at the most difficult contours and intractable drawings…Painters on the road, I seize nature and place it in your hands!

– (Maxime Du Camp, writer, critic and painter)

The calotype process was lighter and more portable than the daguerreotype, so it was well suited for expeditionary photography. However after the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1855, the precise clarity of collodion in glass negatives started to replace the slower and nuanced calotype paper negative.

Albumen prints followed shortly after replacing salt prints.

A noticeable example is the use of the glass negative processes, by the brothers Bisson who established one of the earliest professional studios in Paris, bypassing calotype paper negatives entirely.

In 1858 and 1860 the two brothers attempted to ascend Mont Blanc to photograph its summit unsuccessfully. They instead made photos of the Pyramid of the Empress, sea of Ice spots and published an album of 24 views to commemorate emperor Napoleon III and empress Eugenie.

During their first successful attempt to the summit of Mont Blanc, with the assistance of a guide and 25 porters of their photographic equipment, they pioneered the use of a portable darkroom tent.