For years I was a teacher at a middle school in a lower-socio economic neighborhood. A colleague and I did extra-curricular photography workshops every week with a group of interested students. The things that we concentrated on the most were (1) taking/practicing lots of photos and (2) looking at other people's photos and trying to figure out what you like (or don't) about them.
We would pick one compositional aspect ... like, say, "the rule of thirds", and would explain it and look at a bunch of photos that looked great because of it, or not-so-good because they put the subject too central to the composition. Then we'd go outside and take lots of photos (several of the kids had to borrow school cameras or one of my or my colleague's extra cameras) with the goal of practicing the "rule of thirds".
SOOOOOooooo, my suggestion to you would be to (1) take lots of pictures ... grab a digital camera (so you can delete as many shots as you want), and in the meantime (2) get online and LOOK at other people's photos. There are a LOT of great photo critique websites out there. DPS has a critique forum ... flickr has some good critiques ... you can google for other photo critique sites ... and then you can look at shots that you like or don't like, think about WHY, and read other photographers' comments about the image.
Get shooting!
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