After our first, and very succesful, experience hiring a vacation photographer in Cesky Krumlov to take family photos, I knew that one day while in Poland, we needed to do it again. For our first experience, we used Localgrapher. They were great to work with and our photographer came down from Prague to take our photos. I appreciated how streamlined their process was, so I returned to review their photographers for Gdansk. As it turns out, the photographer I had wanted was unavailable. I decided to try to find my own photographer in Gdansk. I mean of course people live there, so there must be photographers there too!

I found Anna Pijas and fell in love with her work! She works with a variety of clients, but what drew me to her work was her style of “jounalistic” documentation of normal, every day occurances with an eye for finding beauty in the mundane. We exchanged a few emails to find the right time and day during our trip. I let her chose the location with the direction that we wanted something that showcased Gdansk. She chose a beach on the north sea, about 20 minutes outside of the main city of Gdansk. While I had a more urban theme in mind, like our experience in Cesky Krumlov, I am actually delighted she chose this location!

In the summer, Gdansk and the nearby cities of Gdynia and Sopot are popular for the sea-side vibes and location. They attract many tourists to their beaches, which border the North Sea. In the winter, the number of tourists drops off as it’s not really beach weather. Nonetheless, the day we headed to out to Brzeźno for photos, there were quite a few people out enjoying the afternoon.

It was a breezy, cold day. Colder than we are used to living on the Gulf coast! I had picked out perfectly curated and coordinating outfits, but it ended up being far too cold and windy to take off our coats! Thankfully, it was the beginning of the trip, so the girls coats and hats were clean, and, in a fantastic stroke of luck, did actually coordinate fairly well. We proceeded to spend the next hour or so playing on the beach. Running, writing in the sand, finding little seashells, walking the pier. It was lovely, even if it was a little cold. The girls were troopers too! Julie was totally not feeling well - we later figured out her runny nose and cough were from an ear infection, poor kid - and all of us were pretty jet lagged.

In hindsight, I think heading to the beach to take in some natural beauty, the sunshine, and play in the sand for a bit was exactly what we needed to help get over our jet lag. And having some beautiful photos to document our afternoon doesn’t hurt!

If you’re heading to Gdansk and want to hire a photographer to take some vacation photos, I would highly recommend Anna. She was amazing to work with, speaks amazing English, and takes beautiful photographs. You can find more of her work on her website.