I think every photographer has a Loch Ness Monster, a scene that appears abruptly, astonishes you, and then dissolves before you can get photographic evidence. It’s a scene that defies description, and the rapidity with which it is there one moment and gone the next makes you wonder if you ever saw it at all.

There’s nothing wrong with missing a shot; it keeps you on your toes, determined not to bungle the next opportunity.

The problem comes when instead of moving on to new scenes, you get hung up on the one that got away. That’s when your Loch Ness transforms into Moby Dick, an elusive image that you chase to perpetuity, never satisfied.

Two weeks ago as I was driving south on 90/94, Loch Ness surfaced before me. Clear skies and an early morning sun were in my wake and steel-blue clouds were spread before me, an unbelievable sandwich of light for the rusting industries of southern Chicago and Gary. The factories lay in distant silhouette, the smoke pluming from their funnels seared white, as if the sun glancing over my shoulder was a black light fluorescing them, all stunningly offset against the overcast backdrop. I was on an elevated section of the expressway, a perfect vantage point for the perfect shot.

I was also, however, cresting the bridge of the Skyway, which consists of 4 lanes, no shoulder, and no exit ramp. Darn my luck.

A photographer’s first reaction, while watching Loch Ness slip back into the murky waters, is often to cast a line and reel in anything, just to prove that something exists. So at the first opportunity to pull over–well over a mile past the original scene–I took this shot, which doesn’t even come close to the grandeur of the missed shot, but at least demonstrated that the elements I saw so poetically arrayed were in fact in place.

May this be the worst photo I ever post on this blog.

A photographer’s next reaction, particularly after taking a crappy photo in the stead of greatness, is to go on a hunt for, if not the same scene, something equally inspirational. Call me Ishmael if you must, because today I aspired to trade in my Loch Ness for Moby Dick.

Preempting the sun and returning to Chicago’s notch in the Rust Belt, I hoped to cobble together a photo just as exciting as the one that had spontaneously appeared two weeks ago. Things were promising: a few clouds refracted the light of the rising sun, the geometric profiles of the bridges and towers of the old steel industry contrasted sharply with the sky, and I was in time for it all to come together.

But it didn’t.

(Above and below) Due to the location of the sun, I ended up working the power lines and railroads into my shots and will have to save the steel mills for another season.

All I can say is, lucky for me, there are plenty more fish* in the sea.

*Sorry, Moby Dick, for grouping you with fish. I promise it was all for the purposes of the analogy, er, mixed metaphor.