How I Became A Wedding Photographer in Europe
This probably won’t be the post you’d expect.
But some of the best things are surprises. Some of the best things aren’t planned. Then again, so are some of the worst.
The move to England with four children 8 years and younger: planned. The terminal cancer diagnosis of my father at the same time: unplanned. The delay in visa application from Tom’s employer: unplanned. The ability to be at my father’s side when he died from cancer because of the delay: priceless. And the then hastily procured & incorrect visas that cost us our ability to stay in England: completely unplanned & unhinged. So many seemingly insignificant moments can pile up and cause a huge shift in your future. And some of those things are completely out of your control.
Our beautiful family photos taken Spring 2018 by Wil Barber before we moved from England
We chose to move to the Netherlands
as a solution to the British visa problem
After three years living in England and through the Brexit vote, I knew that trying to reenter England would be a long and complicated process. I also knew with children entering their teenage years that our family needed a stable home base & one education system. They’d since grown accustomed to a more European lifestyle and we weren’t guaranteed the same job or location where we’d lived before. Since Tom’s employer was headquartered in Eindhoven, our solution was to move the family there.
And so the Netherlands became our third country in four years. Having lived in England proved to be the perfect jumping off spot for how we wanted to adjust in a new land. We put the children in language immersion programs & learnt Dutch ourselves. For the first few months our only mode of transportation was by bicycle. Within months our children had integrated into Dutch classrooms & we’d found a home to purchase in the neighbouring village of Nuenen.
We thought we’d finally reached stability
but it couldn’t have been further from the truth
We closed on our house on the 1st of April. Despite being Christians, we weren’t particularly superstitious; we did however note the date and softly wonder if we knew what we were getting into. The house was a municipal monument next to a museum dedicated to Vincent van Gogh. It was last rebuilt in the 1860’s, just a couple of decades before Vincent would live across the street. The house needed work but it fit our family of six and was located close to the secondary schools we wanted our children attending.
Not only did 2019 mark the year we bought our house & began cleaning it, but it also marked the year we brought our kittens Calvin & Hobbes home. I’d promised the children they could have housepets once we settled down in our own place. And it marked the year I was diagnosed with medicine resistant stomach paralysis – gastroparesis – though I would only understand the gravity of that diagnosis with time.
Lastly, November 2019 was also the year that Tom’s employer of 20 years decided during a round of budget cuts that they’d let their only scientist with specific temperature measurement knowledge go after moving his family to the Netherlands less than 18 months earlier.
That Thanksgiving we sat in shock as our home filled with guests, the desserts on our plates only a cover for the numbness we felt inside.
My first boxes of drinkable medical nutrition had just arrived. We’d only been in our home a matter of months, the children were only just settled in their Dutch public school classes, and I’d been working a couple months as a postwoman for PostNL. We looked at each other and how far we’d come. We looked at the needs of our children. And we decided to stay.
Living so close to a place like Eindhoven, we figured we’d wait the Christmas season out as we negotiated the severance package. Then Tom would simply find a new job in the new year.
Of course the consequences of a pandemic weren’t planned.
Neither was my struggle to find foods I could digest without pain. After the Christmas season, I gave my one month notice at PostNL. My body could no longer take the strain of delivering the post by bicycle. My supervisors assured me they’d make it work if I couldn’t finish due to health reasons but I was determined to see my work through to the end of January. The last day I fell on one knee from my bike due to weakness & malnutrition. But I finished.
By March the hospitals were flooded with the sick but my specialist was still able to get me in for a NG feeding tube placement. Unfortunately I’m not a very good feeding tube candidate and after two months had to pull it myself, unable to reach my specialist due to lockdown conditions and the overcrowded hospitals. My specialist referred me then to the hospital in Maastricht, where a specific new surgery was seeing good results.
And so it was November and Thanksgiving again, with me unable to eat what was on the table & awaiting endoscopic stomach surgery in a few days.
I mean, I did have to laugh. The universe does have a sense of humour. Here I was, an American, needing stomach enlarging surgery. Basically, the G-POEM procedure would make the exit of my stomach larger with a tiny incision, with the goal that foods would pass easier despite the lack of muscle movement from the stomach itself.
And so having run out of other treatment options & slowly starving to death, I opted for surgery and reached for a sliver of hope.
I was not certain what I could expect as a result from the surgery
But it had to be better than where I was before surgery. My surgery was the last day of November and within three weeks, I began to realise it was not the success the specialists had hoped for. Not only was I not able to eat solid foods, but many of the symptoms stayed the same. It took me double the amount of time planned to get off of the NG tube feeding they’d placed after surgery. Just three small meatballs caused hours of pain.
Isolated from extended family members through distance & the pandemic, with an unemployed husband trying to start his own company, our visas in transition through his job change, and four children dependant on me with many other factors at play, I felt like I’d hit rock bottom. I knew there was no cure for gastroparesis. I knew that unless things began to change I’d be disabled & unable to mother or live in the way I wanted to. I also knew that gastroparesis, when severe enough, can kill.
At this deep point where I had nothing else, I began walking, slowly, with camera in hand. Mostly I walked for the sunrises as my body hurt too much by morning to let me lay in bed very long. No matter the weather, I went out the door. The walking was just enough moderate exercise for my body and the camera kept me interested in my surroundings, helped me learn new skills, and kept my creativity alive.
Gastroparesis was not planned, but my take-no-prisoners response to it very much was.
That deep stubbornness & unwillingness to be overcome was very on brand for me. I’m a second child if that gives some context. So between walks & learning to edit photos, I also researched gastroparesis & digestive issues. I’d lay awake at night reading medical research articles or studying side effects of medications. I tried adding more foods or purees to my diet. I, with my health care providers, experimented with various medications, supplements, and other treatments. And I walked daily, taking time to learn to photograph in manual mode.
With time, almost imperceptibly, my health improved. It did not come from any medications or supplements and it definitely did not come from eating more. First I had to accept that I would be dependent on medical drink nutrition for the rest of my life and would have find the best balance and formula. Then I had to push through the fatigue and brain fog to be moderately active every day.
My photography attracted attention & support, so I thought I’d make it official & establish Amy Harper Fotografie
I chose the start date of my company as 15 May, 2021, because 15 May is the date we left the United States and moved to England. For me, the date reflected the idea of a fresh start. At first I thought I’d be busy selling nature photos and landscapes but I quickly realised that clients only need a couple of pieces of artwork before their wall is full.
Fortunately, around this time I also received invitations to photograph events and to work as a volunteer photographer for our local online news. My photos were also being shared by the museum next door’s social media team.
From there, through word of mouth, my work has grown throughout the Netherlands and Belgium.
In 2022 I booked my first weddings. I also photographed a handful of events in Brussels and locally. I still was not sure of what I wanted to specialise in as photographer, so I continued trying many different kids of paid and unpaid work – branding photography, animals, local news, events, and more. I volunteered as a photographer at our local animal shelter and learned fast paced school portrait photography.
I learnt quickly that my work came alive when I photographed people
Always a lover of people and cultures, there was just something so deeply profound about gazing into the eyes of another & bringing out their light to capture in an image.
I followed mentoring sessions with other wedding photographers, and I took online courses. I also took the beginning photography course at the Nederlandse Academie voor Beeldcreatie. In every way I challenged myself to grow and develop skills as a photographer, and I poured nearly all my earnings directly back into my business.
Not only that, but with the time and effort, my health further stabilised. In 2023, I began swimming lessons and earned my A, B, and C swimming diplomas. I’m still dependent on my monthly boxes of medical nutrition from Sorgente, but look at what I am able to do with it.
The nuances of light and darkness in photography help me balance my life as a whole
Through my photography journey I’ve learnt to better understand life. Often we want things perfectly happy and light all the time. But in photography I’ve learnt that light and darkness have to co-exist in the same image in order to make it beautiful. Its not the absence of darkness or light that makes an image good. It’s whether the lens is clean and how it is focused on the subject of the photo that conveys the message. I’ve learnt I love wedding photography because then I am capturing the moments when love wins. I love tales of triumph.
I also discovered that repetitive, unchallenging product or portrait photography does nothing for my soul. Maybe its all that time spent in high stakes, high risk situations so far, but I love the challenge of creating beauty where there’s still a challenge.
Elegantly refined photography is my passion, as is a personal connection with my couples.
So yes, I hardly doubt this is the post you were expecting to read about how I became a wedding photographer in Europe. Its far more gritty and far less fairytale than perhaps you’d expected. I mean, even the house we bought isn’t finished yet & is full of dust from old walls. But I do believe that that grit and determination is actually one of my greatest strengths as a wedding photographer, as well as a deep well of capacity to function calmly when things get a bit dicey.
I continue to take walks with the camera in hand. It keeps me healthy in so many ways and provides a connection to the land that has become my second home.
And if you ever find yourself at rock bottom, I hope you know that the only direction from there is up. That’s where I’m headed myself.
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