~Half Faced Selfies with Famous European Monuments: A Series~

The selfie. We all have at least one somewhere on our phone, right? We’ve all done it: taken a quick look to see who was around before sheepishly turning our phones towards ourselves and snapping a quick photo before too many people noticed what we were up to. What else are front facing camera’s for, anyway? I’m no exception to this, but I will say that long ago I vowed to myself, that despite my love of photographing my own face from an uncomfortably close distance, I’d never be a selfie-stick wielding individual.

But see, this combination of my unwillingness to use that nifty little metal pole and my 5’3 body’s relatively short arms, whenever I try to selfie, it ends up being an extraordinarily close photograph of my face with a very small portion of whatever background I’m trying to capture myself with. Because of this, I’ve learned it often works best to cut off part of my face, in attempts to capture more of the background. I’ve come to the conclusion that half-faced selfies are okay, because it’s almost guaranteed that the scenery in the shot is far more important than proving the symmetry of my facial features. My tendency to take these sorts of photos with around Europe became a trend, and thus a series of selfies was born.

I present to you: ~Half Faced Selfies with Famous European Monuments: A Series~ It’s one of my most proud take-aways from this semester, if we’re being honest.

#1 ft. Museumplein (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Just a girl trying to hang out with Van Gogh and Rijks, ya feel? (If you’ve never been, here’s a pretty great depiction of quintessential Amsterdam weather, minus the rain.)

#2 ft. Luxemborg Cityscape (Luxembourg City, Luxembourg)

I have an excuse for this one!! I was travelling alone, so the selfie was required. That makes it a little more acceptable.... right?

#3 ft. The Trevi Fountain (Rome, Italy)

Rome, Rome, Rome. Why did you have to be so beautiful? Why did your food have to be so delicious? In other news, I went to Italy over Easter weekend, and the Trevi was so crowded that this was physically the closest I could have possibly gotten to it. It’s okay. I got the selfie.

#4 ft. The Colloseum (Rome, Italy)

 Quite possibly my favorite selfie, most definitely because it was my favorite monument. The Colloseum? 11/10, would recommend.

#5 ft. Sint Pieters Cathedral (Bruges, Belgium)

Bruges was like a little mini-Amsterdam. I went with my parents, and we got incredibly lucky with weather and crowds. My dad’s a big history buff, so seeing him enjoy all of the things we got to see was almost even more fun than even actually being there.

#6 ft. Ancient Thera (Santorini, Greece)

A little bit disappointed with my Greek selfie game, to be honest. I saw SO MANY beautiful things (referring anyone who hasn’t seen it to a previous blog post), but got so busy actually looking at them that I forgot to photograph them. This gem, however, was taken the moment I realized I’d shown up to a trailhead to hike up to that tiny little building at the top of the mountain in my Birkenstocks. Yes, Birkenstocks. We made it, but my toes and I will not be doing it again.

#7 ft. The Danube (Budapest, Hungary)

This was the view from our hotel room!! How cool is that? I stayed on the Buda side (for anyone who doesn’t know, the city is literally split by a river into Buda and Pest, hence the name, Budapest...) but we had a great view of the Chain Bridge and the Pest side, too.

So there you have it. Seven selfies and seven monuments. I didn’t manage to get one when I went to Berlin (the trip happened before the photography series was born) but I’m still pretty happy with the collection. Maybe a few more with some canals are necessary in the next (and final?!) week I’m here? We’ll play it by ear. So now you now what (half) my face looks like. While this is arguably the most pointless blog post I’ve ever made, it’s also probably my favorite. Admit it. Who doesn’t love a great selfie?