The New York Times

It's been a sad week for my career as a photographer, folks.

1. After frantically finishing D's roll of color film on Saturday, I excitedly wound it so that I could drop it off to be developed. The manual said that the roll was finished winding when the tension eased, but there wasn't really any tension to begin with. I would furiously and gave up at an arbitratry time, popped it open, and voila! No film in the camera. This was not my fault. Still it was heartbreaking. All of the photos of the cute people on the street who asked me to take their pictures were gone! The businessman nervously smoking, the cardboard boxes, the pictures of Bench Buddy. All nonexistent.

2. I loaded a new roll of film and shot my homework that weekend. I also got some amazing shots of my former laundromat, which was being deconstructed. I couldn't wait to see them! I took some cool photos of a street fair on 34th Street, and some hopefully pictures of some buildings in that area. I dropped off the film on Monday to have a contact sheet made. When I walked in to pick it up on Tuesday night right before class, the dude behind the counter cringed sadly when he saw me. He said "Oh, Leah, your film. There was nothing on it." Nothing! It had never seen light. It never caught when I loaded it. I was devastated. Not only did I feel stupid, but I hadn't done my homework! This is not like me, folks. I went to class, morose, only to learn that many others with old manual cameras had made the same mistake. The teacher showed me how to load my film, and honestly, there's no way I ever would have known how to do it without having seen a demonstration. I have no way of knowing whether or not my pictures are crap. I don't know if the light meter works. I don't know if I know how to use it. No idea.

3. I took a roll of film last night. I made many mistakes because I was nervous. I am dropping that one off this afternoon. I'm sure I wound it incorrectly, or I opened the camera before it was completely wound, or the camera was set to the wrong film speed. I don't even want to know! I'm sure all the photos will be blurry messes. I'll be terribly embarrassed when I pick them up. I'll shove digital prints in my teacher's face to prove that I can take a decent photo. Bad, bad, bad.

4. I tried to do some of my assignments using my digital yesterday because I thought "Well, at least if I'm sucking I'll know," but because our assignments this week are about motion and not light, I can't do them with my digital because of my shaky hands and because my digital doesn't have a small enough aperture. On top of all this, I was doing the portion of my homework in which I was to capture something that's moving really fast with a really small shutter speed and was very excited with the results showing a vortexed conical tube with media in it appearing completely stationary with water droplets!!!, until I did the same shot at like 60 and it was still frozen. Wtf!? Clearly I have no idea what's going on.

5. In spite of this, I was very excited about my photography career because I was contacted by a woman earlier in the week who works at the cultural center that hosted the Spelling Bee. She said "The New York Times is running a piece about Spelling Bees, and they'd like to use your photo that you took of your boyfriend at the spelling bee. The deadline is tomorrow." D called her and gave her permission to use his image. I then sent her the photo after I'd made certain I'd get a photo credit. In the New York Times. D and I tried not to get too excited about it, as the week hadn't been going well aside from my kick-ass seminar and because neither of us are lucky people. Of course I got excited anyway, because I felt that having a photo in the New York Times would nullify my awful photography week and perhaps redeem my tragic failure as an amateur photographer.

6. And, of course, they ran the story sans my photo. Dear god! My career is over before it even began.

Sniff.

Woe.

Woe is me.

Etc.