James Nasmyth, a Scottish engineer and amateur astronomer, and James
Carpenter, an astronomer with the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, published The Moon, Considered as a Planet, a World,
and a Satellite. Because photography was not advanced enough to take close-up
photographs of the moon, Nasmyth built elaborate plaster models of his
observations of the moon and photographed those for the book. He photographed
the models in raking light to faithfully reproduce the effects of light and
shadow he had observed through his telescope. To promote his conviction that the
moon’s surface was formed by volcanoes, he emulated steam by smearing his
fingerprints on the reproduction plate before printing.