As riverboat work was slow when water was low in the summers, Buchtel resumed daguerreian work in 1853. By September of that year, the Oregon Spectator reported that he had "some beautiful specimens of pictures taken in this city. He is going to Canemah in a few days, to give the people there an opportunity to have their likenesses taken.". While there is some dispute about details, Buchtel was clearly one of the earliest Oregon photographers.

In 1855 Buchtel took his first photographs on paper. During the next few years, he moved between Portland and Oregon City, eventually partnering with Byron P. Cardwell. In the first Oregon State Fair, held in Gladstone in 1861, Buchtel and Cardwell won diplomas for their displays of forty photographs, including twenty ambrotypes.

As photographic techniques evolved, so did Buchtel. By 1865, as a partner with Alonzo B. Woodward, he was selling enlargements of John Wilkes Booth one week after the Lincoln assassination. He also received a commission to photograph Fort Vancouver, where he took a 12-part panorama of the garrison.

In 1873 Buchtel found a new partner, E. H. Stolte. Buchtel and Stolte offered stereoviews and advertised likenesses of Captain Jack and other Modoc warriors. In 1878 that partnership was dissolved, and two years later, after his son's sudden death, Buchtel decided to lease his gallery to William H. Towne while he travelled back east, leaving behind his collection of 25,000 negatives.

Buchtel found to his dismay upon returning home that Towne had discarded almost all of his vast collection of negatives. Buchtel's days as a major Portland photographer were over. He continued to own a small gallery for a few years, but moved more towards civic affairs, serving two terms as sheriff and one as fire chief. He died at home on August 10, 1916.

--Summarized from Palmquist and Kailbourn, "Pioneer Photographers of the Far West".