What does it take to shoot good photographs?

I get asked by quite a lot of my friends how I get my photos to look so different/better than the photos that they take with their own expensive dslr's when they have the same (and more often better) camera. Shouldn't the camera take just as great photos regardless of who uses it?

Well, the short answer is. No!

The slightly longer answer is, cameras don't take photographs, people do.

A little simplistic maybe, so let me try the long winded approach. Bear with me.

Lake Malawi Beach Life - revisiting an oldie!

Taken with a Nikon F801s, junky third party zoom lens and Fuji Superior film.

Online Depth of Field Calculator

Most of you have probably seen this handy site before, but for us uninformed few it is still a handy learning tool:

Online Depth of Field Calculator

Just don't get too carried away by all this geeky calculation business, simply learn what you can then get out and shoot photos in real everyday situations. It's still the best way to learn!
(Although it's kinda fun to release the inner geek just a little bit! Haha!)