Marta, Between Takes

Marta had agreed to sit for maybe fifteen minutes before her shift. She kept a rehearsed expression ready — chin slightly down, a smile that looked borrowed from a passport photo — and I took a few frames of that because you have to, it's polite, it's what people expect a portrait session to be.

Then my phone buzzed with a delivery notification and I looked away to silence it. When I looked back she'd dropped the pose entirely. She was watching a pigeon walk along the windowsill with an expression I can only describe as mild professional skepticism, the same look she probably gives customers who ask if the soup is "really" vegetarian.

That's the frame. Not the one she gave me on purpose.

I've started building in a fake distraction now — a dropped lens cap, a sudden question about something unrelated — just to get past the first, rehearsed layer. It feels a little dishonest. It also works.