The opportunity to tag along with a friend on a trip to Europe came up last fall. For me, travel always means photography above all else and I was worried that I wouldn’t come home with anything I was satisfied with, mostly because I wasn’t going to be in any one place long enough to get comfortable.

To say I was anxious would be an understatement. There were sleepless nights and dreams of rushing around, desperate to find photographs. I had many talks with friends about feeling like I had lost my “eye” or even my passion for photography. I went so far as to consider not bringing a camera at all. Thankfully, I did.

Two days into the trip I woke up early to walk around Amsterdam with my camera. While I had fun taking photos and like that the camera gives me a reason to explore, I was taking boring photos. The best moments were when strangers stopped to talk to me. I realized that I wanted to do something more than snapshots or postcard style images. I wanted to find inspiration for a project to work on. I even wrote in my journal that day about being bored with single photos.

For the next couple of days I used my camera a lot, mostly documenting my trip and only occasionally feeling drawn to something I truly wanted to photograph. I had 100 gigabytes of CF cards with me, so there was no risk of overshooting. I kept at it, trying to find the inspiration to go deeper.

After another day in Amsterdam and a week of bouncing around Belgium (an amazing country, by the way), I was in Paris for the first time in my life and this is where things really changed.

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