Many of the comments here, including mine, have concentrated on the camera whereas the most important part of photography is in fact, the subject.
You firstly have to determine what your preferred subject might be and concentrate on that –
architecture - sport – wildlfe – portraiture? You can then evolve your camera technique to suit
your particular subject. Lighting, exposure, camera angle, composition, are the basics but also consider lateral thinking and welcoming difficult situations because they will give you a greater intensity of thought. It can also be useful to have a second subject interest that involves a different approach in observation, techical requirements and thinking on your feet, both sport and wildlife meet these criteria.
My professional subjects were historic buildings for which I used a large format camera. The satisfaction was in the technical problems I had to overcome to record the very different
subjects. Many of those images were for publication and many thousands of my negatives are
securely held in a national archive.
My secondary subject is street photography, which requires a completely different piece of equipment which is basic and simple to use. The technique is also completely different,
including using observation to predict the right moment to make the exposure. Many of the street photographs have been used for publication, advertising and exhibition. On the website they have been viewed by more than 27,000 people. And so the tip is, initially leave your camera at home and start studying the subject you want to photograph.
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