I was disappointed with my last point-and-shoot digital camera, and I was in Asda and they had the Fuji Finepix S1700 on sale which I bought.

I was told this was an ideal camera for someone who's had no real experience of photography (me), and that it's a good way to learn how to take better pictures and mess about with shutter speed and aperture, etc.

What I want to know is how you learned to take great pictures? Did someone show you? Do you have a natural talent for it? Did you read up loads and just keep practising? I want to be able to take pictures that I'll look at again and again, but ones that aren't too fake looking (which often seems to happen when people have loads of camera kit).

I intend to buy better and better cameras as I learn more as I'm sure my current model will begin to show its limitations pretty quickly, but what I'm looking for is a good resource for digital photography, the hows and whys, really.

linky is a good place to start.

^this

Also 2 books helped me; Understanding exposure, & Digital photography masterclass by Tom Ang

there are some great tutorials on you tube, i found gavin hoey`s very helpful.

Definitely useful, although after you've understood the basics of how it actually works, you're then into the murky/creative areas known as composition. Which is where it gets really interesting, and incredibly difficult .....

I disagree. Once you understand the basics of shutter speed and freezing motion, lens aperture and depth of field, and sensitivity/film speed and resolution; then digital photography makes the composition of the shot so much easier.

With film photography, you shot 36 or so photos then had wait until they were processed to see how good or bad they were, and what mistakes you made in framing the shot. Digital photography lets you see a moment later if there was anything you overlooked whilst you were concentrating on the main subject matter, and if so, take another one where the problem is corrected. And another, and another, which can all be viewed at home to see where you went wrong on some such that you quickly learn how to avoid making most mistakes, mistakes which would take a lot longer to fix with film cameras.

That doesn't mean that avoiding making mistakes means you are taking great photos, but it at least you aren't taking bad ones. Experience is the only way to learn how to take a great photo.

Sure, you could relatively easily make sure you get the exposure and everything correct - the problem is the composition of the image, placement of the objects within the frame, etc. The rule of thirds is a good starting point, and I've seen a few other articles giving pointers as to what makes for better composition.

Good composition isn't easy, and if you aren't naturally creative, it can be darned difficult to get right. At least with digital imaging its easy to repeatedly try again.