Photographer Profile ~ O. Winston Link

Ogle Winston Link (1914 – 2001), known commonly as O. Winston Link, was an American photographer. He is best known for his black-and-white photography and sound recordings of the last days of steam locomotive railroading on the Norfolk & Western in the United States in the late 1950s. A commercial photographer, Link helped establish rail photography as a hobby. He also pioneered night photography, producing several well known examples including Hotshot Eastbound, a photograph of a steam train passing a drive-in movie theater.

Link's images were always meticulously set up and posed, and he chose to take most of his railroad photographs at night. He said "I can't move the sun — and it's always in the wrong place — and I can't even move the tracks, so I had to create my own environment through lighting." Although others, including Philip Hastings and Jim Shaughnessy, had photographed locomotives at night before, Link's vision required him to develop new techniques for flash photography of such large subjects For instance, the movie theater image Hotshot Eastbound, 1956, used 43 flashbulbs simultaneously.

Hotshot Eastbound  "Since I could only see the headlight of the locomotive in total darkness, I did not know until the flash was fired that I had captured this prize." Winston

The iconic Hotshot Eastbound  image was recreated in a Simpson's episode.