Learning a New Skill

When's the last time you formally committed to a course or practice?

May 28, 2025

One of the most common pieces of advice from successful entrepreneurs is to “never stop learning.”

After a few years of accepting and applying this advice haphazardly — I travel often, therefore, I’m always educating myself through new cultures and customs, right? — I began to take it seriously. I started in 2024 by picking back up Spanish, a language I let slip away after my college years. And this year, I leaned into photography.

While I’ve always considered the angles, juxtaposition and lighting in my amateur iPhone snaps, I started 2025 with a new camera and a line-up of photography classes that would better hone my eye and skill.

It was humbling to return to a syllabus; learning on someone else’s schedule.

It was also humbling to realize how little I knew about a camera, despite having used one intermittently as a kid of the tech age. The entire course revolved around manual settings, which until this day, I’m still striving to perfect after unmindfully shooting on Auto for all these years.

Each lesson revolved around a new theme, from lighting to perspective, shutter speed to shooting a series. I took my assignments seriously, and when I wasn’t near my camera but wanted to capture a moment, I recognized myself thinking more about the setup and the why behind the photo. (Of course, not every photo needs to be staged but it made me think about freezing time more intentionally). I also loved challenging myself to capture mundane moments in my backyard in between travels.

I have to admit, when I first started the classes, giving up a chunk of my free time seemed daunting. But by the end of it, the routine felt comforting and nostalgic. After a decade out of a formal education system, it’s a really odd feeling to revert back to syllabuses and assignments — and though I wasn’t taking the course for a degree, I still put effort into each assignment and took pride when presenting my work. I guess some habits never die.

As a travel journalist, this learning experience is inherently beneficial to my career, so I guess it could be considered cheating as I’m not necessarily studying something new or to flex my creative muscle — as my peers may advise — but I’ve loved applying what I learned to capture my travels.

Even outside my travels, I have already used inspiration from my lighting assignments to master staging for product shoots to expand my freelance services.

And outside of all of the ways I can apply photography to my work, well, the course just reinforced the power of learning and submitting to the process. It made me want to commit to learning more — in photography, but also in many other stagnant areas where I’ve once entertained the idea of taking up lessons but never followed through.

So, here’s my commitment to that — in writing, to you all. But I’d also love to know about what you’re learning at the moment? Should I add it to my list?

In the meantime, I wanted to share a few of my favorite photos from my class — to hopefully inspire more learning and keep me (far) out of my comfort zone.