At the heart of Capturing the Light there lies a small scrap of violet-tinged paper over 170 years old & about the size of a postage stamp. On it you can just make out a tiny ghostly image -- an image so small & perfect that 'it might be supposed to be the work of some Lilliputian artist'; the world's first photographic negative. This captivating book traces the true story of two very different men in the 1830s both striving to solve one of the world's oldest problems: how to capture an image & keep it for ever. On the one hand there is Henry Fox Talbot a quiet solitary gentleman-amateur scientist tinkering away on his estate in the English countryside; on the other Louis Daguerre: a flamboyant charismatic French scenery-painter showman & entrepreneur in search of fame & fortune. Both men invented methods of photography that would enable ordinary people for the first time in history to illustrate their own lives & leave something behind of their passing. Photography would transform art the documentation of both war & peace & become so natural & widespread that now each of us carries a camera everywhere with us & takes this most magical of processes for granted. Only one question remains: which man got there first?