Zaria had seen snow in books, in movies, and once, sort of, on the top of kunanyi from a long way away. She had never stood in it.
We were in Canada visiting her grandparents when the first proper snowfall came through, and a family friend who shoots kids' campaigns for a living asked if she could tag along to the park with her camera. No brief, no client, no call sheet. Just a five-year-old meeting snow.
What she caught in that hour is the most honest set of pictures anyone has ever taken of our daughter. The first frame is pure suspicion - flakes landing on her balaclava while she decides whether this is allowed. Then the eyes go wide. Then the snowball. By the end she's on her back among someone's very frosted rose bushes, arms up, catching flakes and shouting a running count of how many she'd caught. The count was not accurate.
We added six of those frames to her book, and they've booked her two winter campaigns since. Both clients said the same thing: you can't direct that face. You just have to be pointing a camera at it the first time it happens.
Her grandparents, for the record, take full credit for arranging the weather.