Robert J. Foster: Since Frisco1522 brought up his name I have always wanted to know more about the great man himself. Just think about it: With a handful of cigars he was able to get the engine crews to pose the locomotive in that classic Foster style; 3/4 view with rods down. I had a photographer friend from that same era who was not able to get the same level of corporation from the crews. He even traveled once with the great Foster himself.
It would be interesting to know where he is buried, and if his marker makes any note of his passion for trains !
There were many unknown greats out there; and I will mention one that I knew personally. William A. Swartz. This man traveled with a 5 X 7 Graphamatic Kodak camera. It was huge work, but the results were amazing ! He so loved the steam era that when the diesel locomotive vanquished all steam he retired his camera forever !
If you have purchased steam photos from Malcom McCarter you probably have some of "Bill's work"

Kevin K.

I used to see some terrific eastern shots by a man named Furler, who also used a huge camera. It shows in his work.
There were some excellent steam photographers back in the 30s-40s. Ivan W. Oaks, C.E."Tex"Prusia who were both from the St. Louis area as well as James Bowie. Tex was somewhat of a loner who did beautiful work.
Unfortunately, Mr Prusia was literally conned out of his entire collection of prints, negatives and slides by a well known name back in the late 60s.
The disappearance of his collection is a huge loss to the community and was a terrible thing to do to a gullible older gentleman. He also shot some very good movies from the St Louis area from the early 40s into the 50s. Some of that survives, I think marketed by Mark I video.
Researching the old photographers is fascinating.

Donald Furler used a 5x7 Speed Graphic "press-type" camera, usually tripod-mounted. These were rather uncommon, and provided the largest negative then available in a portable press camera; most Speed Graphics were 4x5 size, and that is what most serious rail photographers used in the 40s-50s era (John Krause, John Rehor, Jim Shaughnessy, Don Wood, etc.) There were some notable exceptions (Hastings, Collins, for example).

Furler had a technique of attempting to gain enough lineside elevation, to put the locomotive's running boards at the same height as the camera lens. He felt this avoided distortion of the locomotive. It's the same idea as photographing a tall building with a view camera, keeping the camera back parallel to the building-- it won't look like its leaning over.

Looking at many Furler pictures, that lining up of the running boards is quite obvious.

Howard P.

It's possible to avoid that problem with a very expensive item called a perspective control lens.

"PC" lenses are a 35mm camera item; Nikon had the first, back in the 1960s (PC-Nikkor, 35mm focal length).

Large format sheet film cameras had a certain amount of control (rising front, tilting front) for that problem.

My point about Don Furler was that he had a very high degree of technical refinement and careful composition and lighting in his steam locomotive photos from the 40s and 50s.

Howard P.

What Howard said... The "trick" that a Perspective Correction lens can do on your 35 mm was built into into a camera with a bellows, with all kinds of adjustments you could do.

Adding to Kevin Kohls comments, I believe that most of Bill Swartz's steam photo work was in Indiana and Ohio. I understood that Bill grew up in the Peru, Indiana, area. I met him in later years when he worked for a telephone company in Marion, Ohio, but he had long since retired his camera by then.

I keep hoping I unearth a treasure trove of Frisco steam negatives, perhaps the ones Tex shot. Funny thing, the guy who cleaned him out was very talented and had published a lot of his own photos. After the swindle, he dropped off the grid.

NKP779 You are correct; Bill Swartz worked for GTE in Marion, Ohio and it was in Marion That I met him. His father was Chief Dispatcher of the C&O of Indiana and his excellent photos of that line reflect his roots there. Perhaps one of his greatest photos of that line was a double or triple headed C&O 2-8-2 consist crossing the Wabash River !
He also covered the C&O down south and lamented that he was 10 years too late to capture steam there. Many of his C&O photos were of steam already retired. A very talented man, he played concert organ at a Military School in Ft. Wayne, IN.
Bill died unexpectedly and he is buried in Peru, IN. He left his collection of photos; ( tremendous one) to Perdue University. To this day I don't know if it's available to the public.

Kevin K.