To celebrate my partner’s birthday this year, I decided to do an Iceland Stopover that ended up in Amsterdam. Something popped up and he was unable to make it to Iceland so I ended up doing that part of the trip alone. It was my first time traveling to a country completely solo, not to mention it was my first time in Iceland, so I was excited and a little nervous - especially as a woman. However after doing a lot of research, I discovered that Iceland was ironically one of the best countries to travel to alone as a woman for my first time because of the low crime rate. This gave me some assurance but I still couldn’t quite prepare myself for the trip to come without first experiencing it.

Traveling alone means less of the human element in photos and more landscapes (besides the selfie-stickarians and the occasional bystander, which I took full advantage of from afar). I don’t often shoot landscapes but it was fun to get out of my comfort zone, plus Iceland provides the perfect mood and backdrops for anyone to feel inspired. This trip involved a lot of driving through vividly blue skies that lasted hours while listening to James Blake’s “Assume Form” (which dropped serendipitously while I was on my road trip south), staring at beautiful glaciers as they danced slowly in the water, feeling insignificantly small compared to the massive waterfalls, and I was even lucky enough to witness an aurora sky. It was a humbling reminder that this is Earth’s world and we just live in it.