For years, Bob Steinau has had what is arguably the best view of the Kentucky Derby, a perch on a ladder just a few feet from the finish line where he can see the horses sweeping down the stretch and straining across the finish.
But, every year, someone has to tell Steinau who won. He’s always too busy shooting pictures to notice.
Steinau, who retired from The Courier-Journal in 1982 after 38 years, still shoots the annual picture of the Derby horses approaching the finish line with the crowd and twin spires in the background.
The shot, which wraps the day’s essential elements into one picture, has been taken by a Courier-Journal photographer every Derby Day for longer than anyone can remember. In Steinau’s case, that’s a long time.
He has photographed Derby Day for The Courier-Journal for 58 consecutive years.
He shot his first Derby pictures shortly after he joined The Courier-Journal staff, a kid lugging a heavy 4-by-5 view camera.
He didn’t start with the trademark shot of the finish, of course. In those days, Steinau recalls, photographer George Bailey did that.
In his early years, Steinau says he shot the race’s finish from a box above the finish line.
Because he was from Louisville, Steinau knew a lot of people. He would walk down the aisle along the boxes until he found someone he knew and ask to sit on the floor of that box during the Derby. He’d sit beneath the railing pointing his big camera down at the finish line while the box’s occupants cheered above him.
Next, he shot pictures from the Downs’ roof, then pictures of Derby fashions.
Shooting fashion pictures was “a miserable assignment” that required him to spot people wearing interesting outfits, then pursue them through dense Derby crowds while lugging the heavy speed graflex camera and its film holders.
Over the years, some things got easier as cameras grew smaller and lighter and technology improved. Cameras with motors that forwarded film rapidly meant photographers didn’t have to stake their success on just one shot as horses crossed the line.
“Those horses go across you fast,” he says. “Timing the thing was everything.”
About 10 years before he retired, Steinau inherited the Courier’s important “ladder shot,” taken by the inside rail, and he’s taken it every year since. He hopes to do it for two more years, to bring his Derby record to an even 60 years, if his knees hold out.
“Bob is just very committed,” said C-J photo editor Bill Luster.
Steinau’s knees are important because, to get the picture, Steinau and an assistant lug a 14-foot ladder to a selected spot by the final pole, just inside the rail.
Steinau carries his cameras to the top and mounts them on a special framework he constructed that includes a clip for an umbrella in case of rain.
Once he set up as many as six cameras. Now he uses two with motor drives.
When Churchill Downs added its turf track, that changed things, too.
The race before the Derby is a turf race, so Steinau and his assistant now have only minutes instead of hours to get everything in place. The turf track is also an inch or so higher than ground level used to be, so the cameras’ angle had to change slightly.
While the assistant sits on the bottom to steady the ladder, Steinau, now 78 years old, climbs to the top. He is more concerned about gusty winds or rain that could cause problems for his equipment than the risk that he could fall.
When the horses get into range, he starts the motors.
When the horses cross the finish line, Steinau has to remove the equipment quickly. The ladder gets moved to the winner’s circle where another photographer uses it for the trophy presentation, while Steinau hustles his film to the office.
On his way out, someone usually tells him who won the Derby.
