On a gray afternoon in Mechanicsburg, Olya Tovbin (Bik) is underground and somewhere else entirely.
Technically, she’s in the basement of her parents’ home, where she’s been “borrowing” space to shoot – not a grand loft studio, just a big, practical room for lights, props and backdrops. But in her mind, the walls fall away. The room becomes an elf workshop, a corner of enchanted woods or a football stadium. Kids twirl, Santa laughs, and later, at her computer, everyday frames quietly shift into something that looks like it wandered out of a storybook.
“It’s my baby. It’s my passion,” she says. “I wish I could just do it for free and then just not have to worry about making a living.”
Her photographs are grounded and dreamlike at the same time – real families, real kids, a very real Santa – rendered with a painter’s eye and a Photoshop artist’s patience. They are also, she is quick to point out, absolutely, stubbornly human-made.
“I’ve worked years to get to where I am, and now it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s not real,’” she says. “People just don’t know. Especially with an untrained eye, it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s too perfect. It’s AI.’”
Bik was born in Ukraine and moved to the Harrisburg area when she was 5. Art was part of the household from the start.
“My mom’s an artist. She draws portraits, and she’s really, really, really good,” she says. “My dad, he used to take pictures … he loved to capture our life.”
That mix – a mother who conjured faces from a blank page and a father who documented ordinary moments – is still visible in her work.
Before photography took over, Bik built a practical career as a dental hygienist. She bought a camera for fun, started taking pictures of family and friends, and did what everyone does now: put them on Facebook.
“I would just share my work, and people would comment and ask me to do shoots,” she says. “I was like, ‘Hey, I can actually make good money doing this.’”
For years, photography ran beside hygiene as a side hustle. Then life zigzagged. She quit her job in 2013, traveled, got married, had kids. The camera was never far away, but her focus shifted to Liam, Mia and Ava – her three children with husband Alex, who now double as both inspiration and frequent test subjects.
“They’re my little guinea pigs,” she says, laughing. “I’m testing locations and light, but I’m also capturing moments of them.”
Today, the side gig has become the main thing.
“I just want people to see my work and, like, ‘Hey, if you like it, come. I’m ready to shoot,’” she says.
The December cover of Harrisburg Magazine feels both cozy and cinematic, and it’s Bik’s favorite kind of alchemy. She calls what she does “painterly storytelling fine art,” a mouthful that somehow fits.
A Canon 5D Mark IV with Canon lenses is her workhorse. Westcott lights help shape the mood whether she’s outside or in the basement studio. Backdrops – ordered from companies she’s followed for years – create the bones of the scene: a cluttered workshop, a snowy lane, an epic sports arena.
“Sometimes I’ll see the backdrop and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, I have an idea,’” she says. “The outfits and the scene just pop into my head.”
For this year’s Santa sessions, the theme is an elves’ workshop, complete with toys, paintbrushes and little bits of implied mischief. She sets the scene, brings Santa and the families into the frame, and then focuses on what matters most to her: connection.
“I’m focused on the moments, the connection and the authenticity,” she says. “Those in-between moments are usually what I love to turn into a portrait.”
After the session, the quiet work begins. Bik culls images in Lightroom, then takes favorites into Photoshop one by one.
“I hand edit every single one,” she says. “I look at a picture, I soak it in, and I’m like, ‘OK, this is how I’m gonna edit this one.’”
Her edits are subtle and not-so-subtle at the same time: softening distractions, deepening shadows, drawing the eye to a face or a gesture, sometimes adding a hint of magic – a glow, a swirl, a bit of story that wasn’t literally there in the moment but was absolutely present in how it felt.
When she hears the phrase “magical realism,” Bik lights up. It’s close to what she’s chasing: real people in real spaces, but with the volume turned up on wonder.
“I love to do that with kids,” she says. “They have so much wonder. You just look at the picture, and they look like they’re looking at magic or something.”
The trouble is that, in 2025, anything that looks too magical sometimes gets dismissed as fake – not “edited,” but “generated.” In Facebook groups devoted to painterly photography, Bik and her peers see the same comments over and over: “That’s AI.” “Not real.” “Too perfect.”
“I had someone comment, ‘Oh, that’s definitely AI,’” she says. “I’m like, ‘Oh my God, here we go.’ I have to show them the unedited photo.”
To push back, she started recording her screen while she works, speeding up the footage into short behind-the-scenes edits that take viewers from raw frame to finished piece.
“The behind-the-scenes video leads into the final product,” she says. “It’s like, OK, you can’t argue with that.”
Ask Bik what keeps her going, and she doesn’t hesitate.
“It’s my antidepressant,” she says. “If I ever get down and I go to a session, I just totally leave everything that’s bothering me, and I’m fully there in that moment.”
It’s not that she’s immune to nerves. Before big Santa weekends, she still spirals through what-ifs: What if the lights misfire? What if she forgets to check a setting? What if the kids melt down?
“I get really excited during my sessions,” she says. “I don’t know how to explain it. Just very excited.”
Once the camera is in her hands, the anxiety drops away. Bik talks fast, moves faster and shoots a lot, constantly looking for the in-between frames: the second right after a twirl, the glance between sisters, the split-second when Santa isn’t posing at all but listening.
“I’m trying to get every moment,” she says. “So, I’m shooting the whole time.”
Christmas may be her busiest stretch, but Bik’s painterly approach extends beyond Santa. Her latest obsession is sports – not action on the field, but what she calls fine art sports portraits. She uses dramatic backdrops and poses kids in their uniforms, asking for swings and kicks and leaps that look like motion even when they’re frozen.
“They’re loving it,” she says. “They pop more.”
The business side, she admits, is still her kryptonite. She second-guesses pricing, peeks at what other photographers charge and winces at spreadsheets.
“I’m an artist,” she says. “The art and the passion comes before the money.”
In the end, the reward isn’t a viral post or a magazine cover, though she’s delighted by both. It’s the messages that land in her inbox after she delivers a gallery.
“I just love when people get excited about their photos,” she says. “They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I love it.’ It brings them joy, it makes them happy. That’s what makes me happy.”
She pauses and laughs.
“I’ll look at my work and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that’s my work. Hey, that’s pretty good.’ But the part where they love it … that just makes me happy.”
In a time when images are easier than ever to fake, Bik’s pictures stand as a reminder of what can still be done the slow way: one family, one frame, one hand-edited photograph at a time.
For now, you’ll find her in that Mechanicsburg basement, building tiny worlds out of canvas and light – and then, long after the kids have gone home, sitting quietly at her screen, turning those worlds into something magical that is, reassuringly, still completely real.
