My first pregnancy taught me something I didn’t expect: sharing the news cost me clients.
My second pregnancy showed me that connection is everything, and that women are the strongest beings alive.
This image represents the nine months that I’ve been building a human inside of me with all the love in the world. It represents the time that I was absent from my work because I was building something more important than a portfolio. They represent the time I was away from my camera, from my inbox, from my clients. And they represent something I believe deeply: that in life, there are things more important than work. Family is one of them. Maybe the most important of all.
The thing technology can never replace – connection. We live in a world where we are always connected and yet increasingly alone. We reach out to people and can’t quite get through — not because we’re not trying, but because we’re not really present. I’ll keep using social media. I’ll keep up with technology — it matters, and ignoring it would be foolish. But I refuse to let it lead. Because the one thing technology cannot replicate is a genuine human connection. And that is exactly what I bring to my work. What I want to keep bringing, more intentionally than ever.
For 2026, and hopefully for the rest of my time in this business, I want to build relationships that last. Clients who become friends. Projects that matter to the people in them. Images that carry real feeling, because they were made with it.
Maternity leave is a strange, beautiful, exhausting thing. It starts with a tiny human who needs you for absolutely everything, and slowly, they begin to reach for the world on their own. I chose to take six months. It was the right call. And now, as March arrives and the light starts to shift here in Stavanger, I feel ready. My mornings look a little different these days — camera bag in one hand, stepping away to pump milk for the little one at home with her dad. But I am here. Present, excited, and ready.
Spring has always been my favourite season. Not sure if it is because it is also my birthday season. The one where everything starts again. It seems right that it’s also when I come back. Flowers start being here, longer days, a little more hope in the air. I’m easing in through March, and from April I’ll be back full-time — available for events, shoots, meetings, and yes, coffee.
To those who kept me in their budgets while I was away. To those who sent messages, checked in, and waited. To those who believed in the work even when I wasn’t there to do it — thank you.
I’m here. Ready to connect. Ready to create. And very much looking forward to what comes next.
Andrea R.
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