Leaf prints, or, Glimpses at photography
Leaf Prints, or Glimpses at Photography is an 1868 Philadelphia book by Charles F. Himes, a professor of natural science at Dickinson College, on making photographic prints directly from leaves. The pictures are plain ornamental plates: a central rosette with leafy scrolls on a ruled page, a symmetrical flourish with pointed tips, and a dark field with pale fern, maple and seed-pod silhouettes. A designer could take from them the negative-image effect of light leaf shapes on a dark ground, and the tidy symmetry of botanical ornament.



