It is a quirk of nature that silver and chlorine combine in the dark but separate when struck by light, leaving behind tiny, black, round particles of silver.
In 1833, an English gentleman named Henry Fox
Talbot coated a sheet of paper with silver chloride and after putting a leaf on top, left it in the sun, so that dark silver appeared everywhere except in the leaf’s shape.
Under the leaf, the paper remained white. A wash in saltwater stopped the process.
