This gentle art of recreating past techniques appealed to both my aesthetic senses as a photographer and an artist and I started compiling recipies and testing methods about 6 years ago, during my Diploma of Photography studies in Sydney, Australia.
Alternative processes are very varied and take a long time to master.
To begin with I am going to talk about a type of Kallitype, which is commonly reffered to as a Van Dyke or Brown Print. Kallitype is basically made up from silver nitrate and ferric salts, a very easy to mix solution once you find the ingredients. This mixture is then coated onto paper and left to dry. Then it is placed in contact with a large negative and clamped to a board with a sheet of glass sandwiching the lot together. This is then placed in the sun and left to develop rich dark brown tones.