Last week I shared seven highlights from Amsterdam, but really it should have been eight. I had a half day in Amsterdam on my way to and from Paris for a workshop. I was excited to have some time in another city and country as a solo traveler before I joined 12 other people for six days of learning. I was equally looking forward to that alone time on the way back, knowing it would be a nice way to wind down.

It was so great to just wander the city, drink a coffee and people watch and, of course, take tons of photos! The thing about solo travel, though, is it can be really difficult to get photos of yourself in those kick ass locations. I’m an avid selfie hater. You will rarely find a selfie of me anywhere. It’s cool if other people do it, but I’m not a fan of doing it for myself. I just hate the whole process of it and how it makes me feel. In fact, sometimes when I see people trying to take a selfie, I’ll walk up to them and offer to take the photo for them. As a photographer I also have a vision for what I want in a photo and how I would like a photo look. Most non-photographers are not thinking about what I’m thinking about, so while asking a random person to snap a pic is completely reasonable and better than not getting the photo, I was on an epic trip and I wanted a few photos to represent that.

So I decided to woman up! I went ahead and booked a Flytographer shoot for myself to get some cool photos in Amsterdam on my way back home. Photographers are so used to being behind the camera, we forget sometimes we need to put our money where our mouth is. For me this was the perfect situation. I tend to love photos of myself on vacation more…I think my face is just more vibrant and I am usually having less bad hair days (#girlprobz). I also wanted to go through the process of booking through Flytographer so I’d know what my Houston Flytographer clients are experiencing. In fact, it was my clients from my last Flytographer session that convinced me to do it. They had previously used the service and were planning to use it again. When I mentioned I was thinking of booking the session in Amsterdam, they told me not to even think about it, just do it. So I did.

Now I feel like I need to disclose some information here, because I think it’s so important for you guys to know that I understand there’s a lot that goes into making the decision to book a photo session. For me it was one specific thing. I wasn’t holding back because of the cost. I did a one hour session for $350 which is such a fair price for the quality and service. On a European trip it would be easy to spend that much on souvenirs in the form of stuff. Souvenir money gets spent, but in my life I have come to see that the pictures last and a lot of the time, the stuff doesn’t. So it was easy to redirect souvenir cash to a photo session. It also wasn’t about the time. I was going to be walking all over the place regardless of someone being with me or not. It was so easy to schedule a time and place to meet that it was a non issue.

For me the thing that was holding me back is how I look. This is a real human issue. We worry about how we look. We worry if we’re dressed okay, how our hair looks, how our face or makeup looks. We’re spending money on photos and we want to look our best. It’s a completely reasonable expectation. But how I look, is how I look. I’m not going to look any better NOT being in photos. Like a bride on her wedding day we put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect and for everything around us to be perfect that when that doesn’t happen we consider it a fail or a waste. It’s not a fail. The fail, the waste, is failing to make the most of the fail. It’s life…and life is nothing if not a grand adventure.

I’ll never be as young and awesome as I am right now. I mean, I suppose I could be more awesome, but obviously I’m not going to age backwards. So I had to get over myself a little. And you know what? It rained, the pink dress I had picked to wear to help me stand out against the Amsterdam backgrounds ended up under a trench coat, it got dark much earlier because of heavy cloud cover, and MY HAIR LOOKED STUPID! And despite everything that could have gone wrong actually going wrong, I love my photos. They tell such a great story from a trip that, as Flytographer says, deserved more than selfies!

Major huge thanks to my Amsterdam photographer Steven for his enthusiasm and for the stroopwafel recommendation!