Photography was originally known as the "dark arts", but did you know this description was simply a tip of the hat to tintype?
Tintype is a 19th-century method of development used by early photographers.
The chemicals involved, like silver nitrate, often left them with blackened fingers, thus giving rise to the dark arts.
"Tintype photography was the very first type of affordable photography," Analogue Labs' Aurelia Carbone explained.
But it's the challenge of unpredictability that has driven tintype back into focus for modern-day photographers.
"When you get it right, it is very magical."
It's all about chemistry
Images are made on blackened tin.
The image forms on the tin due to a chemical reaction with its coating.
Silver nitrate is one of the chemicals used to coat the panel and when it comes into contact with skin it can make it go black.
"Photographers always had black fingers," Ms Carbone said.
Through a variable routine of chemical baths and time — and with a bit of luck — photographers could create ethereal images on the plates.
"It's much more like chemistry than darkroom photography," Ms Carbone said.
"It's very temperature dependent and you mix up the formulas from scratch.
"There are a lot of things that can go wrong when you first start out."
Mysterious chemical reactions change colours
Wear red in a tintype photograph and it appears black.
Black comes out grey.
Blue turns to white.
"The collodion on the tin, the light-sensitive material, is only sensitive to ultraviolet and blue," Ms Carbone said.
"Colours turn completely different and once you get your head around the colour changes, it can be quite interesting.
And often images appear on the photographs that aren't seen by the naked eye due to the chemicals' reactions to ultraviolet light becoming part of the image.
Images appear twice
Unlike standard darkroom photography, the negative of tintype appears before your eyes then reverses to the final print.
"There is this moment when you are looking at this piece of tin and then tantalisingly, slowly, striptease-sexy slowly, this image starts to come up.
"When you move it into the next bath of chemicals the image disappears then reappears as a positive.
"It all comes together to make it a very unique object, a one-of-a-kind, more like an heirloom than a photograph."
