Van Dyke Brown

At my local camera club the judge commented that he (personally) had never seen a Van Dyke Brown print entered in a competition. Until I looked it up on Wiki I had no idea what he was talking about and in the digital age can't see a lot of point to the method. The print in question was just a normal B&W conversion (well it looks B&W on the monitor) and that was the way it came out of the Canon printer as have the other B&W photoshop conversions. It looked "Sepia" so was entered in the mono section.
Has anyone done Van Dyke Brown printing using chemicals etc. with any success.