"At the age of 17, Barnor was teaching basket weaving at a missionary school and the headmaster gave him a camera "to play around with––it was a Kodak Brownie 127, made of plastic".In 1947, Barnor started an apprenticeship with his cousin J. P. Dodoo, a well-known portrait photographer, "mostly taking pictures of people because when you take pictures of flowers and places there's nobody to pay for them.