Film Photographer @wasitapril with the Sprocket Rocket & LomoChrome Metropolis

Parisian experimental photographer April, a.k.a @wasitapril, is back with street scenes and portraits, this time taken with the Sprocket Rocket and LomoChrome Metropolis 35 mm ISO 100–400 film.

Last year, we picked her brains about her creative process. This time we got her to try out the Sprocket Rocket and LomoChrome Metropolis film to find out in which situations she would use this retro cinematic combo.

Hi, April! How was your experience shooting with the LomoChrome Metropolis film?

In the past I have seen images of one of my friends that were shot on Metropolis and that was also why I wanted to try this film myself. When it comes to the colors, the LomoChrome Metropolis comes with a desaturated look that definitely has some cinematic/postapocalyptic vibe to it.

For this reason, I decided to shoot it in the city. I think it's a great match especially for street photographers.

Did you have a concept that you wanted to follow for the shoot? And what do you think about the results?

Well, I was curious to see what the film could do in different environments. So I took some images outside and some inside of some kind of market hall (with big windows on the roof). And even if I really like the result of both, I will say that I slightly prefer the outcome of the shots that I took at golden hour.

As the colors of the film are, generally speaking rather "cold", I think with the sun going down we can still feel the warmth in the images somehow. Maybe not through their color, but through the play of light and shadow! So I am actually curious to try the LomoChrome Metropolis again in this environment.

And how was the experience with the Sprocket Rocket ?

The Sprocket Rocket is really interesting and fun to use. I will admit that I had to get used to the idea of only being able to switch between two apertures and two shutter speeds. As I wanted to shoot the first exposures of the roll at night, I had to operate in Bulb mode and I would have better used a timer for it.

By guessing my exposure time I definitely underexposed the first shots of the roll and for that reason my planned double exposures did not appear as I would have wished. But that's part of the game.

Would you try the LomoChrome Metropolis and Sprocket Rocket again? Especially as an experimental film photographer, do you already have ideas about the situations in which you want to use the film stock or camera next?

Unfortunately, I only shot one test roll with the Sprocket Rocket which I think was not enough to test it thoroughly. I would love to use it again in the near future especially as I like the idea of having the film sprockets exposed as well.

As it takes panoramic photographs, I would use it again to take some landscape shots and film soup the roll afterwards. That would be interesting to see how the film soup distorts the exposure on some of the sprockets! And why not do that in a forest and use the LomoChrome Metropolis? It might resemble a Tarkovsky aesthetic.

Many thanks to April for sharing her images and stories with us! To view more of her work, check out her LomoHome and Instagram account.

written by sylvann on 2023-02-10 #gear #people #street-photography #sprocket-rocket #lomochrome-metropolis #wasitapril