by Steve Barry
If you could see my personal Facebook profile as it looked on Thursday, you'd see it was almost one solid wall of tributes from friends about Richard Steinheimer. Stein passed away on May 3, 2011. For those of us who are photographers, we owe a great debt to him -- he was truly the master of the art of railroad photography.
I had discovered Richard Steinheimer's photography sometime in the late 1980s, brilliantly composed black & white images of trains in the west (Stein's color work, while less known, is also excellent). Stein became a hero to this budding photographer.
In 1991 at Railfair at the California State Railroad Museum I finally had a brief chance to meet Stein. I was walking through the museum grounds with Jim Boyd (another of my heroes who would later become my boss) when we came across Dick near the museum turntable. The three of us chatted and I quickly handed my camera to Jim Asplund to get a picture of these two photography legends talking with a mere mortal. Quite a highlight. Still, it was only a brief meeting and I still really didn't know Stein.
Forward to Winterail in Stockton, Cal., maybe around 2004 (the exact date escapes me at the moment). A bunch of us had gone to Tony Roma's steakhouse for Friday night dinner. The last to arrive were Stein and his wife, Shirley Burman. And the last two seats at the table were directly across from me! During that evening I was completely enthralled by the soft-spoken giant as he recounted stories and answered a million questions. Somehow we get the impression that the "legends" are somewhere above us, but this evening proved that impression wrong. Talking with Stein the for the first time was like talking to Stein as if he had known you for years. A lot of laughs from Stein and Shirley and dinner came to an all-too-quick close.
Some would argue that he was the greatest railroad photographer ever. To me, there is no argument -- greatest is the word. A decade or so ago, Ted Benson wrote a book featuring Stein's photography. The title is "Done Honest And True." That was Richard Steinheimer. Roll on, Stein!
