ouch

"Um... I know you said we should come to class without any film in our cameras, but I tried to rewind mine at home and the film tension's just disappeared - I was hoping you could help me.." and I held out my OM-1 with black and white film elusive but still interred safe within, containing shots from Italian villages, sunkissed portraits of my extended family, countless sleepy mornings back at the cottage, fiddling in the garden with lavender blowing in the breeze and earlier that day, experimenting with tones in the gritty lanes of Brighton's backstreets...

"Hmm," she said, turning it over in her hands, "did you try rewinding it already?"

"Yeah, I think so," I said, doubt creeping into my voice, "but there's just no tightness - the wheel just goes round, look," and I demonstrated.

"Ah," she said, and before I really knew what was happening, she popped the back on my camera and showed me the film inside. I looked up at her. 

"Holy... what the....?!" I thought. My eyes widened, hugely puzzled by this new 'technique' for safely removing film from cameras.

"Your film's snapped, see?" she said, and began pulling my film off the spool as I sat, mutely gaping at the reams of now-past-saving negatives wheeling out, piling up in her hands like some awful, grey celluloid intestines. I felt sick.

"Um... ok... er..." I said, not really sure what to do and groping for comedy to pull me through as the rest of the "photography for beginner's" class watched, obviously blind to the horrific disemboweling taking place in front of them.

"You ok? We can always use it for practise film!" she grinned, bouncing the grey strip into the bin and handing me my now-empty camera while the class laughed, cheerily. I struggled for a weak grin and blinked into space. All I could see were the shots that had just vaporised like slasher-movie vampires in the sunlight, 'poofing' into nothingness. Sure, I was just trying the camera out for the first time, and the lack of any proper exposure meter meant that all my shots were probably pointless, but... wow. What a way to go.

I think I'm still in shock. On the last film photography course I was on, my LC-A got stuck mid-shoot and it was rushed across Brighton to a friendly dark bag for the necessary surgery: the harsh realities of a "real" photography course seems to mean that there's no room for emotion on this particular learning curve.