I do think Mike Wares' Cyanotype is superior to the conventional version.
I've had a number of people send me prints done conventionally claiming
that they were equal. These were done by experts with claimed experience
doing them. I compared them to a couple of quickie test prints I made and
they were close but not equal in dmax to the Ware process ones. Secondly,
and I wish someone would test this out, the Ware cyans have a much nicer
tonality to them then the conventional version. Obviously something to do
with the straightness of the response curve. When I was in England, Mike
showed me a couple he had done of Laycock Abbey which were absolutely
exquisite in tone. I am not a fan of cyanotypes, but these prints had
subtle mid-tone values. The material is quite a bit faster than the
conventional version which may be linked to its subtleties in tone.
It has a long shelf life. I have some solution that is now over a year old
and it's still good and no mold. It's a one solution emulsion and should
meet Terry's "keep it simple" dictum. (Though if we wanted to keep it
simple we'd all be doing Polaroid!)
John Barnier's article of about a year ago in PhotoTechniques is a great
intro to the process. I do believe one of the problems that people have
with it is that it needs to be manufactured in larger quantites than Ware
or the PT article describes. When I first tried it, I seemed to have gotten
a lot of losses and had problems filtering. In this small of a quantity it
is kind of like trying to cook up a cup of chilie from scratch instead of
making a pot full. I use a industrial blender to grind up the material and
a vacuum driven filter to filter it. We make a couple of liters at a time.
I think any errors are averaged out in this large of a quantity. I think if
you were to make your own, that if you doubled or tripled the amounts, you
might have better luck. It will last a long time and it isn't that
expensive in the long run.
I think this is a process that is deserving of more attention than it is
getting. Almost a simple as Polaroid, a little more costly than plain old
cyanotype, but produces far more elegant images.
--Dick Sullivan