This is a neat photo from my archive, exposed back in 2013 at West Chicago, Illinois, where Union Pacific’s former Chicago & North Western main line crosses Canadian National’s former Elgin, Joliet & Eastern route.

Yet every time I look at this image, I see a missed opportunity. I had a fleeting moment to get the composition just right—and I blew it.

There are two problems. The first is straightforward: a shutter speed of 1/500 second wasn’t quite fast enough to freeze the action, and the nose of the Metra F40PH-2 is slightly blurred.

The second problem is the one that really bothers me. I managed to clip the top of the CN locomotive on the freight holding south of the crossing. If I’d positioned the camera just a few inches lower—or released the shutter a fraction of a second sooner—the photograph would have clearly included the freight in the distance with the grating annoyance of visual intersection.

Some problems are easy to fix in post-processing, but a compositional error like this isn’t one of them.

Tracking the Light examines railroad photography!