Rubén Ripoll Pous First Impressions with the LomoChrome Metropolis Film

Valencia-based photographer Rubén Ripoll Pous takes the LomoChrome Metropolis film for a golden-lit photoshoot, proving the film's impeccable mood-making capabilities, both indoor and outdoor.

Hi Rubén, could you make a small presentation to the readers of our Online Magazine?

Hello! First of all, thank you very much for contacting me! My name is Rubén Ripoll and I am from Oliva, a town in the province of Valencia (Spain). I am 29 years old. I work in a hospital as a health worker, and in my free time, I like to walk around places where I can photograph with my analogue camera. My life, in general, is a bit quiet.

Tell us about your photographic background. What is your story? When did you start photographing?

Actually, I don't really know when I started to photograph, I used to take my digital camera on a few occasions but the results weren't so great, so I put it aside for a long time. In 2019 I went on a trip along the entire West Coast of the USA with my digital camera and I think that views of all those cities and landscapes so unique and different from Europe that it made me bring out my most creative side.

When I got home, I started to see the thousands of photos I had taken and while I was retouching them I realized that I was always looking for those tones and that unique grain that only analogue photography offers. I think that ignited inside me that spark that made me leave aside the digital and opt for the analogue world and since then I only shoot that way. So you could say that, in a self-taught way, I have discovered a sense of photography in the last 2 years.

These wonderful photos were taken with the Metropolis Film: what are the features that impressed you the most?

I really liked the color it offers on the water and I was especially surprised by the dark tones and the brightness of the sun on people's skin.

Which camera did you use for these photos?

I used the CANON A1 camera with the 50mm f/1.4 lens.

How did you choose the location? Did the kind of film influence the choice of the location?

Luckily I live in an area where I have the beach a few minutes from my house. As I could already guess what tones and what saturation that film could offer me I tested it by photographing the sunrise just when the sun was rising in low light and the rest when it was completely out. So in a way, both things influenced my choice.

In an undeniably digital age, why do choose to shoot film?

When I started analogue photography, I instantly fell in love with the process and all the infinite creative possibilities that films can offer. Double exposures have always caught my attention, being able to imagine an unreal image in my mind and then try to capture it in a frame is something that I find fascinating.

In a way, it helps me use my imagination, a blank canvas where I can fill in every experience, dream, or memory through a slow process that maintains the illusion. I think that by shooting a roll of film, I will immortalize my own memory where that precise moment can never be seen again. I look for something that moves me, that makes me feel that what I do is part of my inner self.

Thanks to this medium I have learned to appreciate the importance of each person, site, or object every time I look through the viewer. I have also learned to have patience and the illusion of meeting again with that moment already lost in time, knowing that I will never live that moment again but that day, I knew how to see the beauty that was in it.

What photo equipment do you take with you on your travels?

I always carry a backpack my Canon A1 and a Nikon F3 with their respective lenses and apart from that, a 28 mm f/2.8 lens and another 135 mm f2.5 and many creative filters, although now I just entered the medium format with a Mamiya C330 that I plan to take with me too.

Do you have any interesting projects or collaborations planned?

I have in mind a project that I have been collecting for years. I love to write poetry, I have been writing for a long time and I want to make a book about my poetry accompanied by my most intimate photographs. It will be a dream come true. Some of the photographs in this LomoChrome Metropolis film will undoubtedly be included.

Follow Rubén in his Instagram.

written by melissaperitore on 2021-11-27 #gear #spain #nikon-f3 #mamiya-c330 #canon-a1