It's good to take some courses...Learn the equipment and all. But to learn to take pics, you have to start to look at the world differently. Don't just go around looking like you always have. Look deeper, look past what you normally see. Don't just try and be artsy either, those pictures tend to turn out pretentious. Train your eyes to see pictures....it takes time and with a digital...you can learn it cause you can take a million shots and see what works and what doesn't. The ones that don't ...delete...

Also, don't buy any photography books for a while...they just tends to make you look for pictures that someone else has already taken....
