Practice

Once you've got the basics, seen what others can do you need to practice. This doesn't mean sit your camera on AUTO on a tripod and leave it on continuous to take 1000 photos of the same subject at the same angle with the same automatic settings. You need to practice the techniques you're learning to help you better understand the concepts and affects of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, composition and so forth.

I know it's hard, where do you start? What concept, what subject? Just thinking about can make you want to give up. In this section of the website I'm going to give you a few challenges that you can try with a given example so that you can hone your skills. Once you've done a few you'll get the hang of it and might come up with your own challenges. If you do come up with something interesting, send me your ideas and maybe I'll share it with others.