The story behind one image: a maternity self portrait waiting for light
Some images begin before they exist
Some images arrive fully formed. They feel immediate, almost inevitable. Others ask something different from us. They ask for patience, preparation, and a quiet kind of trust.
This image belonged to the second kind.
It existed in my mind long before it appeared in front of the camera.
During my pregnancy, I decided to create a maternity self portrait, working as if I were my own client. Not as documentation, and not as a record of time passing, but as an act of presence. I wanted to step into the process from the inside. To feel what it means to wait. To experience what it means to prepare without rushing toward a result.
At OLA LAB, this way of working has slowly become central to my approach. Photography begins before the camera is switched on. It begins with attention.
Becoming my own subject
Photographing myself while pregnant was not about control. In fact, it required letting go of it.
I approached the session as I would with someone else. I thought carefully about the space. I chose a background that would not compete with the body. I adjusted the camera, tested the frame, and paid attention to how the room felt rather than how it looked.
This is something I speak about often in maternity photography. The environment matters because the body responds to it. A space that feels calm allows a person to arrive differently. Even when that person is yourself.
There was no urgency that day. No checklist. Only a clear intention and the willingness to wait.
Waiting as a practice
Light does not follow schedules. It does not respond to our plans or our expectations. In winter, especially in the Netherlands, this becomes impossible to ignore.
Late afternoon light in January is unstable. Clouds move quickly. The sky shifts tone without warning. What feels promising one minute can disappear the next. Nothing holds for long.
Rather than working against that instability, I chose to stay with it.
Waiting in photography is often misunderstood as passivity. I experience it as something much more active. It is a form of listening. A way of staying open without forcing a moment into existence.
This is a practice that runs through my work at OLA LAB, particularly in maternity photography. Pregnancy itself is a lesson in waiting. The body changes without asking permission. Time stretches and contracts. Nothing can be rushed without consequence.
L’impermanence
There is a French word I often return to. L’impermanence.
It describes the reality that nothing remains fixed. Everything exists in transition. Rien n’est figé. What feels stable is often a temporary balance. Un équilibre fragile.
I have encountered this many times in nature. Early mornings in Switzerland, hiking above the clouds. Fog settling over the Rigi, hiding the lake completely. We waited without knowing what would happen next. Then, almost casually, the wind shifted. The sun moved slightly higher. The landscape revealed itself, only to disappear again moments later.
Each version was different. None could be repeated.
This same impermanence lives in the body during pregnancy. It lives in light. It lives in the small windows of time when things align briefly before changing again.
Photography becomes a way to acknowledge this, not to stop it.
When the light arrived
That afternoon, the light arrived quietly.
A narrow beam broke through the winter sky and crossed the room exactly where I had imagined it might. It was not dramatic. It did not last long. But it was precise.
Enough.
I did not adjust anything. I did not ask for more. The image exists because I waited rather than intervened.
The shadows were as important as what the light revealed. They shaped the body without explaining it fully. Nothing was decorative. Everything was functional.
This is something I return to often in maternity photography. Light does not need to flatter. It needs to tell the truth of the moment.
Light and shadow as dialogue
In the mountains, chiaroscuro exists long before it is named. Light reveals what it can. The rest remains in shadow.
I have always been drawn to this dialogue between visibility and absence. Where contrast gives form, and restraint gives meaning. Artists like Caravaggio and Rembrandt understood this deeply. One through tension and rupture, the other through quiet intimacy and depth.
In photography, I approach light the same way. Darkness is not something to eliminate. It is where depth lives. It is where the image breathes. What is unseen carries as much weight as what is visible.
This approach informs my work at OLA LAB. Especially in maternity photography, where the body already carries so much history, anticipation, and vulnerability. Light becomes a collaborator rather than a tool.
Presence over performance
One of the reasons I wanted to experience this process myself was to understand what it asks of someone to be photographed in such a transitional state.
Pregnancy already places the body under constant observation. Medical appointments. Measurements. Timelines. Expectations. Photography can easily become another layer of performance if we are not careful.
What I am interested in is presence.
In this image, nothing is posed in the traditional sense. The body is allowed to exist as it is. The light does not instruct it how to look. It meets it where it stands.
This philosophy carries through my maternity photography work. I am less interested in directing and more interested in creating the conditions where something honest can appear.
A state passing
At the time, I did not know this would be one of the last images I would make while pregnant.
Pregnancy ended quietly. Not with a dramatic shift, but like fog lifting when the balance changes and the light decides to move on. The following day, our daughter arrived.
Looking back, the image feels less like a portrait and more like a threshold. A moment where body, light, and time aligned briefly before changing again.
This is often how maternity photography works at its most meaningful. It marks a passage rather than a pose.
Why I photograph at OLA LAB
This is how I approach maternity self portrait work at OLA LAB, allowing the image to arrive rather than forcing it into shape.
Not to capture, but to allow.
Not to direct, but to witness.
Not to rush, but to stay long enough for something honest to appear.
At OLA LAB, maternity photography is not about freezing a moment in time. It is about recognizing that the moment is already moving, and choosing to meet it with care.
Some images arrive fully formed. Others reveal themselves briefly before changing again.
This is where that moment stayed.
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