Almost.

Every photographer knows that it takes dozens of shots, on average, to get the perfect one. Sometimes hundreds.

So whenever an exception—an exception that proves the rule—comes along, you remember it. This afternoon, I noticed some deer outside and captured three photographs before they noticed me and took off running.

Just three.

This is one of them, and I must say I'm more pleased with the composition of this image than I sometimes am in those "average" cases I describe above. The positioning of the deer, the turn of its neck, the blurred lines of the tree branches intersecting the space diagonally, even the tiny, but striking bits of color against the gray and white of the newly fallen snow—it all seems to work.