Photographs On Apples and Eggs
To make a photograph in green on the red skin of an apple is a wonderful but simple feat. Tie up the selected fruit on a sunny bough in a thick yellow or black paper bag for about three weeks before harvest time. Immediately after taking off the bag, paste a black paper stencil or a very contrasty negative to the apple with white of egg. It should be small, to fit the curved surface quite closely. Clear away leaves, so the sun gets clear access to the fruit, and leave on the tree till it becomes red. If not then ripe, put it back into the opaque bag for a day or two till ready to pick. The negative may then be soaked off. Don’t use a valuable negative, but make a duplicate for this experiment. A paper stencil is better, anyway.
To put a photograph on an egg, take one which is perfectly clean, sponge it over several times with 1 to 50 solution of table salt, dry, then sponge over with 1 to 12 solution of silver nitrate. Keep your fingers out of this, or they will turn fast black. Then take a black paper stencil or a small contrasty film negative, cut a hole in a piece of black flannel somewhat smaller than the negative, and tie around the egg to hold the negative. Then bring into light, print out, wash and tone and fix like any printing-out paper. And don’t eat the egg, for chemicals will go through the shell.
2. Figure 91.—A DOUBLE. BY H. G. READING. is out of sequence. Another Figure 91 comes later in the text.
3. Mismatched quotation marks are as they were in the original book.