Agua salada. Pipa, swimwear, and the easy heat of an early shoot, before any of us knew this would still be going a decade later. Salt water and good instincts.

We shot this one outside in the late sun, her tucked against a palm trunk with green shrubs crowding in and a high-rise going soft and blurry behind her. The light came in low and golden, lit up every strand of that long hair, and turned the whole edge of her into something warm. You can see a parking lot back there if you look. Glamorous it was not. The light did not care.

She had a hand up near her shoulder, lips just parted, that pink strap catching the sun, and she looked completely unbothered by all of it. No posing hard, no trying. Just a girl in the heat who happened to be impossible to photograph badly. I figured out pretty fast that my main job was to keep up.