© Armando Bellmas

This is Anna.

What I love about this shot is that it exists somewhere between a real moment and posed one. A moment almost cinematic yet unforced.

I don’t remember the exact circumstance too well, if I told her to stop and look back or if she just did it on her own, but there’s an intimacy in the moment that makes this photograph so interesting to me. There’s a closeness in that split second just long enough to give it a sense of meaning, but short enough to wonder if it means anything at all.

The truth is that it is posed, sort of. I did guide Anna through the vision I had in my head for the shot. Then I told her to stand around the bushes and began shooting. I don’t recall any exact direction on my part (as alluded to before), but there were some suggestions. However, leaving the subject to act on her own disclosed this moment. (Anna isn’t a pro model, by the way.)

It’s those moments, right in there between real and posed, and capturing them in a photograph that excites me most about my own work of this kind and people photography in general.