The skills involved in producing calotypes were not only of a technical nature. Hill’s sociability, humour and his capacity to gauge the sitters’ characters all played a crucial part in his photography. He is shown here on the right, apparently sharing a drink and a joke with James Ballantine and Dr George Bell. Bell, in the middle, was one of the commissioners of the Poor Law of 1845 , which reformed poor relief in Scotland, and author of Day and night in the wynds of Edinburgh [2] . Ballantine was a writer and stained-glass artist, and the son of an Edinburgh brewer. On the table we see a beer bottle and three 19th-century drinking glasses called “ale flutes”. One contemporary account describes a popular Edinburgh ale (Younger's) as "a potent fluid, which almost glued the lips of the drinker together, and of which few, therefore, could dispatch more than a bottle." [3]