In this image we seem to be looking down on the boy, probably the son of a poor Newhaven fisherman, who is standing next to a large basket with some vegetable matter in it. Perhaps it’s a moss used to keep the fish damp on their way to market. This image is a calotype, the contemporary process of the daguerreotype that was invented in England by Talbot (and hence is sometimes called Talbotype). In this process, a negative was produced on thin, waxed, sensitized paper, then printed on another sensitized paper. The grain of the paper negative prevented really sharp images. That and other difficulties with the process prevented it from becoming as popular as the daguerreotype, and it was soon replaced by glass-plate based negatives.

This public domain image was taken by the famous Scottish photographer David Octavious Hill (1802-1870) in 1845. He was educated at Perth Academy, and later the Edinburgh School of Design, and became a well respected artist, producing oil paintings and lithographic sketches for book illustrations. In 1843 Hill joined with Robert Adamson in opening a photographic studio, where they took portraits of many of Edinburgh’s leading citizens, as well as outdoor portraits and landscapes. Adamson died in 1848, and although Hill kept the studio alive for a few months, he soon abandoned it — the business end of things conflicted with his artistic temperament. He continued to produce prints from existing negatives, and used many of them as the basis for further paintings.