There is a crossing in central Tehran that I now know better than my own hallway. Grey asphalt, a slope you don't notice until you're walking it in knee-high boots, and a light cycle of exactly thirty-eight seconds, which sounds like plenty of time until you learn that the usable part - the part where the traffic is stopped and the light falls between the buildings just so - is about nine.
The brief said "effortless movement". I want to talk about that word, effortless. What it means, practically, is that the trench coat has to be at full flare, the front boot has to be mid-strike, the chin has to be level, and none of it can look like I'm thinking about any of it. You get one step in the frame per crossing. Then you walk back, reset the coat, wait thirty-eight seconds, and do it again.
We did forty takes. Not because anything was wrong - the photographer kept saying "beautiful, again" which is set-speak for "I will know the right one when I see it". Around take twenty-five, a taxi driver started giving me scores out of ten through his window. He was, honestly, a fair judge. The frame that ran was take thirty-three. He'd given it a nine.
People ask if street shoots are more relaxed than studio ones. They are not. The studio waits for you; the street does not. But when it works - when the coat and the light and the nine seconds all agree - you get something no seamless backdrop can fake: a city, mid-breath, agreeing to be your set.