Lou Butterfield

Today, I took a retirement portrait of my college photography professor. I took photography in the spring of my freshman year (spring 1989) so I could learn to do darkroom work. In the fall I had gotten a job with the Yearbook but I had no darkroom skills. Leslie Downs, the head photographer, taught me to print but they all acted like developing film was rocket science. Mike James was the campus renown photograher and photography teacher at that time but he left in the spring of 1989 to work on a doctorate. Therefore I got Dr. Butterfield which was good with me, I didn't know the difference. I remember that I made an A in the class and only missed one test question. The question was something about 80A or 85A color correction filters and since I could never keep them straight I guessed the same answer for both questions so I would only miss one.

The real memory from that class came from a photo assignment to shoot a silhouette. I left class that day and walked to the student center and came upon a basket truck working on the power wires outside the student center. The sky was clear, and I could easily maneuver to get the sun right behind that basket. Using my trusty Canon T-90 and my 50mm lens, the only lens I had at that time, I took the photo. Developed the film myself and printed a beautiful 8X10 glossy of my silhouette assignment and turned it in. When Dr. B was passing the graded photos back he stopped on my photo and showed the class a good example for what he was looking for, he actually referred to my photo as a PERFECT example of what he was looking for in the silhouette assignment. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good until I looked on the back to see that he had given me 4 out of 5 points for my PERFECT print. Since Dr. B was cool, I raised my hand right there in the middle of class and asked him if he hadn't said that it was a perfect example he agreed and then I showed him the score I got. Without missing a beat he said "it wasn't that perfect." He took the print back and adjusted my score to perfect and we all lived happily ever after.