A new experimental method called retrographic imaging has been developed which uses retroreflected light for visualising minute irregularities in reflective opaque surfaces. This paper provides a qualitative explanation of this phenomenon, the experimental setup required for such imaging, and describes an experiment which was devised to determine how this type of imaging can be correlated to actual surface topography. Results indicate that grey level intensity is proportional to an average between the surface contour and its rate of change of slope.