When the lease on the Berkeley Square studio ran out in 1955, Madame Yevonde found other premises just off Knightsbridge, close to Harrods' store. Although by this time she was sixty-three years old, and the days of the portrait studio seemed numbered, she did not feel ready to retire. Never at a loss for ideas to promote her business, she decided that if people were no longer ready to come to her studio, then she would go to their homes and photograph them there, often photographing their homes, their children and their pets as well. She started exhibiting again, the first such exhibition in 1953 consisting of photographs of children who lived in the same street as she did, with the proceeds going to the Save the Children Fund. Other work featured in a Royal Photographic Society exhibition devoted entirely to women photographers in 1958. Around this time, Madame Yevonde also started experimenting with solarisation, while an exhibition at her Knightsbridge studio in 1961 entitled 'Dove or Predator?' featured a series of portraits of women in which she attempted to divide them broadly into these two categories. These exhibitions served to keep her name before the public in lean times, and she continued to receive commissions for special assignments, in addition to her portraiture.

In 1964, she received an invitation to stay with friends in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. As she had always harboured a secret ambition to photograph the Emperor of Ethiopia, this was an opportunity not to be missed and so, with her sense of adventure still burning brightly at the age of 71, she flew out to Ethiopia with her assistant, Ann Forshaw, who had joined her just a few months previously. A commission from the magazine Homes & Gardens to photograph the British Embassy in Addis Ababa, where H.M.the Queen was scheduled to stay while on a state visit to Ethiopia the following year, helped to finance the trip which, not surprisingly, provided plenty of material for another exhibition at her Knightsbridge studio. Pride of place went to portraits of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, photographed at the Jubilee Palace in Addis Ababa, as well as portraits of other members of his family, and some of his pet lions.