I used to daydream about going to photography school in Bangkok––long before I began spending so much time here. Way back in the days when I had a desk job. In Mississippi. I would sit in my doorless office, in a building that required sending everyone home during tornados because it was essentially a collection of trailers strung together. I would shove aside writing in favor of scrolling through photos of longtail boats, Chinese shophouses and dumpling mavens. I would google various school courses. I would track down the teachers and stalk their past images.

I didn’t even own a digital camera in those days. It simply sounded like such a cool experience.

Then, in a weird twist of events, I forgot all about it once I actually purchased a Nikon. I traded up this year to the D750. The new full frame resurrected a passion for learning. It also jogged my memory of being 23 and daydreaming about it.

At 37, I finally had the freedom, the cash flow and some time here to enroll. How much did I like it? I came back for a second set of courses this past week.

I’m self-taught, beyond a three-month-long, basics course in New York City. I’ve picked up photography like I’ve picked up various languages around the world, gathering scraps as I go along. How to say hello in Thai and how to format a memory stick. The rule of thirds (which I still suck at), and the word for cold water (which I still suck at.)

I nail a moment occasionally, but half the time it’s an accident. When it’s not––prior to this course––I couldn’t definitively tell you why I loved one resulting image over another. Just like my cobbled language skills, there are holes in the foundations when you self teach. You can’t accidentally learn to conjugate a verb. Someone is going to have to show you.

I chose Photography School Asia after some perfunctory digital sleuthing. I liked Jonathan Taylor’s web site, the intensity of his work, as well as the breadth of his background. You won’t find many people who’ve shot commercial fashion and the Thai drug wars of the ’90s. He’s got a few Time Magazine covers to his name, and, as I’d discover over the five days we spent traversing the city, editing and having the odd, after-class Singha, he’s got incredible stories and a truly enviable expat history here. He speaks fluent Thai and owns a studio in my favorite neighborhood of Bang Rak. It’s another daydream of mine … to be fluent … to someday be more local. He’s super easy going, but if you’re serious about learning, he’ll give you plenty of hard assignments in the field and plenty of constructive criticism in the studio.

I suppose I’m still in the scraps, self-teaching stages of making those daydreams of living in Bang Rak happen. As for my own history in imagery, I know I’ll look back on this as a pivotal moment in a very long learning curve. It was an investment very well spent.

Art is something you never master, but there are those moments when your skills noticeably improve and it’s a great feeling.

Now, if I could only get the damn phrase for cold water correct …

My favorites from Photography School Asia courses in Composition & Environmental Portraiture