Film Soups for the Summer by Patryk Klimkowicz

Film souping is a much-loved experimental technique that many Lomographers have tried over the years. Even if the results can be hit or miss, there's a feeling of excitement and amazement to see how the recipe you use can create dreamy and wonderful results. Last year as the summer sun was high in the sky in Poland, Lomographer Patryk Klimkowicz, also known as @moongrowl, decided to film soup his travels to see what would happen. Capturing his summer adventures in Zakopane and Krakow, as well as a holiday trip near the Baltic Sea in Łeba, the majestic sceneries somehow become even more elevated through his use of film soup. As summer is a time for play, we talk to Patryk and learn more about his process and the stories behind his remarkable photos.

Greetings! Can you introduce yourself and tell us how you started analogue photography?

Hi! My name is Patryk and I am an experimental film photography fanatic based in Poland. The start of my analogue photography adventure dates back to the year 2016 when I and the Lomographer @mloscik were roommates. He had already been into analogue photography for a couple of years and one day I showed him the digital photos I had taken with a fake GoPro camera during my trip to Catalonia that summer. He said they were quite good, and I should try analogue. Without thinking much I ordered my first Lomo LC-A+ camera online, and after shooting two regular rolls of film, it stopped being just a hobby and became more of an obsession. I quickly switched from being an amateur analogue photographer to a camera and film hoarder and a passionate experimenter.

We were really mesmerized by your album Łeba. Can you tell us the story behind it?

The photos in this album were shot during my holiday trip with my wife (known on Lomography as @myxanne) last September to Łeba in Poland. Łeba is a small town based on the Polish coastline of the Baltic Sea. It is surrounded by a national park and a nature reserve. It is a very unique place with a very diverse landscape, you get the sea obviously but also two pretty big lakes, ‘Łebsko’ which is fully situated in the national park, where there is no water traffic, and ‘Sarbsko’ which is located in a beautiful natural reserve. You also get dreamy forests full of moss, all types of fungi, and most importantly you have the dunes! The Slovincian National Park is famous for the biggest natural dunes you can see in Poland. It is also one of the less light-polluted places in the country.

Why did you decide to use film soup for these photos?

Most of the photos in this album are rather high in contrast as they depict silhouettes, sunsets, trees, and the moon, so film soups are the perfect way to give the otherwise mundane background an unusual, and unpredictable twist. Also, I am simply a film soup maniac these days, so a very small number of the film rolls I shoot are spared from being soaked in some mixtures. Probably just my recent tries at astrophotography and occasional B&W films are the only ones I like to keep clean.

What ingredients were in your film soup?

It depends on the film but one of the following or a mix of thereof: natural garment dyes (various colors), cheap aftershaves, floor washing liquids. Usually mixed with boiled water. That would be it for this album I guess.

You also have an album called Random Summer. Can you tell us more about it?

The photos in this album were shot during the summer of 2023 in Zakopane and Krakow. Various films and cameras, and of course, film souped. Zakopane is a town in the heart of the highest mountains in Poland, the Tatra Mountains. It is also the place where my wife’s parents live, so we often go there to have some rest from the fast city life. This leads us to the Krakow part, which is the part of the album depicting the summer in the city we live in. That summer I bought a Sigma 600 mm lens for my Pentax MZ-5 SLR, and that’s where my journey with astrophotography started. You can see some of my first attempts at photographing the moon in this album.

What’s a typical summer like for you?

The typical summer for me usually involves at least two trips to the seaside, some trips to the mountains, lots of walks, and lots of photo experiments. Spending as much time in nature as possible. Usually mostly chilling, nothing crazy.

Your photos are really distinct. How did you end up with this style of photography?

Tough question, I have never really thought about it, to be honest. I guess I am just a pretty creative person and I am not afraid of experiments, even if it involves a risk of losing the whole film roll. I am also a self-taught photographer, I never took any photography classes and was not so much interested in the field before I started shooting analogue myself. I guess that could let me stay relatively not influenced by any particular style in photography.

Is there anything you want to share with the rest of the community?

Thanks for giving me this opportunity to share my view on analogue photography, and say a little bit about my work. Although the story behind may be much more mundane than the photos themselves.

Maybe just a short manifesto as well: Don’t be afraid to experiment! And just the obvious: Keep shooting film!

Kudos to @mloscik, @myxanne and @pattsyto.

We thank Patryk for his colorful and psychedelic photos. Be sure to follow him on his LomoHome and Instagram.

written by rocket_fries0036 on 2024-07-10 #gear #people #places #nature #poland #colorful #moon #dreamy #psychedelic #film-soup #film-souping