(1) Negative staining is a technique where you don’t stain what you wish to visualize but rather you stain everything around it thereby enhancing the contrast and making the object more visible.
(2) An example of deliberate negative staining - using Nigrosin (or India Ink) to visualized the capsule surrounding the yeast Cryptococcus neoformans. In a darkly stained field, the yeast cells would be seen as a natural or neutral colour, with a definite clear zone seen around the outside of the cellular wall.