sites for photography

I agree that joining a camera club is worthwhile. You may find some friends to go out and take photographs with There's a lot of great online information - www.geofflawrence.com is a good site. However, nothing beats going out and taking photographs and learning from your successes and failures. Bring a notebook or tape recorder and record all the settings for each photograph you take. Take a photo of one scene using many different settings on your camera, and then compare them on your computer screen. It may help to print them so you can lay each photograph side by side for comparison. Mark the camera settings on the back of each print so you don't have to go back to your notes. I keep all my bad photographs, too, and note what I did wrong or what I should have done.

You might like to have a look at http://www.thephotographerslife.com/, and maybe subscribe to their email newsletter; another website with a regular newsletter is http://digital-photography-school.com. Like most of these organisations, there is a mixture of free lessons and tip sheets, plus some paid content. If you want a well structured course of training, then you will need to pay for it: better in my mind (and in my experience) is to join an established camera club. You will learn a great deal and advance very quickly.