History remembers Honoré d’Albert, duc de Luynes, as an avid supporter of the arts, a passionate archeologist, and a patron of photographic activities—a man who dedicated his life to scientific endeavors of all types. Most famously, in 1856 he initiated an international competition to rectify issues facing the stability and reproduction of photographic prints. Ultimately, the duke wanted to find a way to reproduce photographs in permanent printer’s ink without the intervention of manual retouching. The duke possibly started the competition in anticipation of his own publication, Voyage d’exploration: la Mer Morte, which became a landmark in the history of science, art, and photography. The competition and the Mer Morte are testaments to the challenges that faced photography in the mid 19th century and, further, the extensive efforts made to solve them. In 1864, eight years into the Duc de Luynes (DDL) contest, the duke and naval navigator Louis Vignes embarked on the first phase of the Mer Morte expeditions to largely unexplored Christian sites. As the expedition’s photographer, Vignes faced many challenges; the blistering heat, dust, wind, and rugged environment made photographing on site difficult, especially as the locations were far away from any source of supplies. Even under the best of circumstances, creating serviceable negatives would have been a challenge. Vignes primarily used glass negatives, though the many surviving results were sub-par. While Vignes had proved competent in making paper negatives of Middle Eastern subjects in the 1850s and early 1860s, his lack of experience with glass negatives resulted in poor exposures, fading, multiple losses, and other unintended effects like solarization.