I have a backlog of unpublished photos, including this gem from a prolific trip I took to Europe in 2018. On this same trip, I took a lot of favorites including several from Paris and a panorama of Stockholm. However, a folder of images remained untouched. Finally, I revisited them, and this one stood out. But where was it taken?

I’ve already written several times about my work trip to Paris in 2018 which yielded an absolutely incredible evening of photography after a solid day of rain. After taking two sunset photos of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and its statue on top, the evening continued with blue hour providing a benedictory backdrop for the Musée d’Orsay at twilight. This was the final photo I took on that evening, closing out an extraordinary day of weather and photography.

Sometimes you want something in your photos, but you have a hard time finding it exactly. For me, I wanted to capture the essence of Stockholm but I had a hard time finding the right place to see it. Stockholm is an amazing city, with a breathtaking combination of modern Scandinavian architecture mixed with classic European castles and buildings. But Stockholm’s most notable feature is also its most striking – the entire city sits on an archipelago of 14 islands next to the sea.

I previously posted my photo of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel from my trip to Paris last May, and I loved the combination of the arc and the crazy sunset behind it. After an earlier rainstorm, the clearing clouds provided a gorgeous canvas for a sunset of bright colors. I had already taken several photos of the arc as a whole (my previous post), and I was looking for another photo that made good use of the light and color in the sky.

In 2012, I was working for uTest on a new mobile testing product they had acquired from a development shop in Warsaw, Poland. In September of that year, I took a trip to Poland with Roy Solomon, who was uTest’s VP of Product and one of the cofounders. This was the first time I had been to Poland, and I my trip was an incredible mixture of working with good people, eating delicious food, and seeing a city that is a little off the beaten path for most Americans. On our last day, Roy suggested we do two things: go get some of the best coffee in the world and see Warsaw’s historic Old Town.